Posted on 06/04/2004 8:08:18 AM PDT by Michael_Michaelangelo
It is not often that the audience at a scientific meeting gasps in amazement during a talk. But that is what happened recently when researchers revealed that they had deleted huge chunks of the genome of mice without it making any discernable difference to the animals.
The result is totally unexpected because the deleted sequences included so-called "conserved regions" thought to have important functions.
All DNA tends to acquire random mutations, but if these occur in a region that has an important function, individuals will not survive. Key sequences should thus remain virtually unchanged, even between species. So by comparing the genomes of different species and looking for regions that are conserved, geneticists hope to pick out those that have an important function.
It was assumed that most conserved sequences would consist of genes coding for proteins. But an unexpected finding when the human and mouse genomes were compared was that there are actually more conserved sequences within the deserts of junk DNA, which does not code for proteins.
The thinking has been that these conserved, non-coding sequences must, like genes, be there for a reason. And indeed, one group has shown that some conserved regions seem to affect the expression of nearby genes.
To find out the function of some of these highly conserved non-protein-coding regions in mammals, Edward Rubin's team at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California deleted two huge regions of junk DNA from mice containing nearly 1000 highly conserved sequences shared between human and mice.
One of the chunks was 1.6 million DNA bases long, the other one was over 800,000 bases long. The researchers expected the mice to exhibit various problems as a result of the deletions.
Yet the mice were virtually indistinguishable from normal mice in every characteristic they measured, including growth, metabolic functions, lifespan and overall development. "We were quite amazed," says Rubin, who presented the findings at a recent meeting of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York.
He thinks it is pretty clear that these sequences have no major role in growth and development. "There has been a circular argument that if it's conserved it has activity."
(Excerpt) Read more at newscientist.com ...
Ping
Very interesting, even it a bit over my head. I'll bookmark for later. Thanks.
Junk DNA yields new kind of gene
"Every time we thought we understood everything going on here, we have been wrong. There are additional layers of complexity."
I wonder when the term "Junk" will be removed from all scientific literature? If scientists would have approached the research from an ID perspective in the first place, they probably would never have coined such a term.
The more we know, the more we know we don't know.
This cuts both ways. Unless some other portion of the genome "takes over" for the deleted portions, the usefulness of the deleted areas are questionable. On the other hand, the fact that they are ultra-conserved and seem to convey no survival advantage is a severe blow to RMNS. In that case, even if another portion of the genome "took over", there would be no reason for the deleted region to be ultra-conserved under the RMNS paradigm.
Maybe the DNA is able to self-replicate in a recursive process.
Kind of like how a group of programmers made a complete 3d first person shooter game with bleeding edge graphics and levels, but it all packs down to an extremely small file size. Every time you run the game it goes through an algorithm where it actually generates all of the graphics using some kind of recursion.
If you think about it, that would appear so. The vast majority of the world seems to have some kind of fractal pattern in it (just look at tree branches/leaves, alveoli branches in the lungs, fjords cut out of cliffs, etc).
YEC INTREP
Such as?
See post #8. Time and further research will tell.
It wouldn't surprise me to find similarities with how the brain stores information.....
Now, if somebody can figure out how to store all of that "life info" on a bit of DNA, think how it will revolutionize data storage/data handling in the computer world.
The implication is that the junk DNA is indeed junk DNA. Quite astounding, isn't it?
It certainly does. It demonstrates that circular reasoning allows false assumptions to creep in.
This discovery was no doubt made by a creation scientist, since no mainstream scientist would risk his reputation and grant money by rocking the boat.
pingity ping
I thought it was creationists who didn't like the term "Junk DNA." This study vividly demonstrates that there's every bit as much slop and junk in the genome as we ever suspected.
Did you mean to reply to #4?
Evidence that you don't read the article you post.
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