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To: ahayes
Again, rather than behaving like the drive-by media, do feel free to elaborate.
51 posted on 06/24/2007 11:57:53 AM PDT by GodGunsGuts
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To: GodGunsGuts

Why? You’re perfectly able to re-read Stultis’ post again. Besides, last time I wrote a more lengthy post to you it was completely ignored.


52 posted on 06/24/2007 12:16:54 PM PDT by ahayes ("Impenetrability! That's what I say!")
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To: GodGunsGuts
do feel free to elaborate

Well, the main point I made in #45 was that the study described only found around 10 thousand short sequences of DNA (among the approximately 95 percent of mammalian that doesn't code for proteins) that, because their sequences are broadly "conserved" across mammalian taxa, presumably have some function. This leaves 99.whatever percent of "junk" DNA with no known function, and no specific reason to believe it has a function (or, more precisely, no function that depends on sequence specificity).

This reveals that your headline commentary -- "'Junk' DNA not junk at all" -- was highly misleading. Saying "at all" suggests that "junk" DNA in general has been found to have a function. But neither the current study, nor any other, has found anything of the sort. Finding that very small portions of previously presumed "junk" DNA aren't "junk" after all is nothing like undermining the notion that large portions of the DNA remain with no (sequence dependent) function. It's something like, indeed almost exactly like, finding a needle in a haystack and then claiming that there's no hay 'cause it's all needles.

The other point was that the only reason for presuming that these sequences have functions is that they are preserved across mammalian taxa, i.e. across VERY broad MACROevolutionary distances. IOW the entire force of this argument is based on assuming that ALL mammals are related by evolutionary descent. Which is a claim you utterly reject. So you have no basis for affirming this finding.

Finally, a subsidiary point I didn't make previously: The study described doesn't actually demonstrate any particular function for these sequences. It hypothesizes a function for a few thousand of these 10 thousand sequences based primarily on their proximity to coding regions and their resemblance to transposons.

In any other context you would ridicule this as gratuitous and even dishonest evolutionary speculation. Your use of it then is hypocritical as well as baseless.

54 posted on 06/24/2007 5:42:12 PM PDT by Stultis (I don't worry about the war turning into "Vietnam" in Iraq; I worry about it doing so in Congress.)
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