Posted on 08/20/2010 9:39:51 PM PDT by neverdem
The human genome is riddled with dead genes, fossils of a sort, dating back hundreds of thousands of years — the genome’s equivalent of an attic full of broken and useless junk.
Some of those genes, surprised geneticists reported Thursday, can rise from the dead like zombies, waking up to cause one of the most common forms of muscular dystrophy. This is the first time, geneticists say, that they have seen a dead gene come back to life and cause a disease.
“If we were thinking of a collection of the genome’s greatest hits, this would go on the list,” said Dr. Francis Collins, a human geneticist and director of the National Institutes of Health.
The disease, facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy, known as FSHD, is one of the most common forms of muscular dystrophy. It was known to be inherited in a simple pattern. But before this paper, published online Thursday in Science by a group of researchers, its cause was poorly understood.
The culprit gene is part of what has been called junk DNA, regions whose function, if any, is largely unknown. In this case, the dead genes had seemed permanently disabled. But, said Dr. Collins, “the first law of the genome is that anything that can go wrong, will.” David Housman, a geneticist at M.I.T., said scientists will now be looking for other diseases with similar causes, and they expect to find them.
“As soon as you understand something that was staring you in the face and leaving you clueless, the first thing you ask is, ‘Where else is this happening?’ ” Dr. Housman said.
But, he added, in a way FSHD was the easy case — it is a disease that affects every single person who inherits the genetic defect. Other diseases are more subtle...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
So, does this explain Obama?
Conversely, there could be (and I am betting, probably is) “junk DNA” which finds a role in FIXING biological damage.
Looks like they found the “Saragosso Sea” of junk DNA. Also like one of the scenes in Star Trek: TNG.
I, BORG!
I doubt there is any “junk” DNA. We just do not yet know what it does.
More distressing ( I am sure it's very distressing to the Darwinists ) is the fact that our most fundamental coding portions of DNA strands ~ called GENES ~ are pretty much the same whether you got a sponge, or a human being, and sponges have 70% of the same genes we do!
These guys even produce stemcells remarkably like our own.
So, what makes us different? Well, it appears to be the timers that turn certain genes on and off! And where are they? Well, some are exogenous. Some are in previously unremarkable parts of strands where nothing seems to happen, and so on.
The critical differences between sponges and men are mostly wired up OUTSIDE of the genes! And that's one heck of a lot of DNA to look through.
I have always considered scientists looking at DNA to be analogous to an application programmer looking at a huge MVS core dump.
There are pages and pages of data, and pages and pages of machine code, but you really have no idea what any of it is used for. You can find the address of your own application program, and understand how to find the input data buffers, but the thousands of pages of operating system code is completely incomprehensible to you.
The junk is DNA that is being rendered obsolete by the constant change in habitat and response to that change.
That process is known in the vernacular as evolution.
Or, alas maybe not. There have to be some supercomputers in there somewhere ~
Epigenetics ping! Turns out the environment does indeed influence genetic switching. Of course, we all knew that, intuitively. Junk DNA? I find that highly unlikely myself as there are many things we can detect as far as sub- particles. As far as 70% like a sponge: two things... duh, it’s DNA.. two: sponges are the main component of the deem voting demographic.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.