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Breakthrough study overturns theory of 'junk DNA' in genome
The Guardian ^ | Alok Jha

Posted on 12/15/2013 5:16:23 PM PST by Dark Knight

Long stretches of DNA previously dismissed as "junk" are in fact crucial to the way our genome works, an international team of researchers said on Wednesday.

(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events; Technical
KEYWORDS: genome; junkdna; ntsa
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I guess DNA is more complex than biologists thought...er some biologists.

DK

Sorry this is from last year though.

1 posted on 12/15/2013 5:16:23 PM PST by Dark Knight
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To: Dark Knight

Nipples on males, on the other hand...

:^)


2 posted on 12/15/2013 5:20:01 PM PST by James C. Bennett (An Australian.)
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To: James C. Bennett

oh yeah,women just hate those.....

/s


3 posted on 12/15/2013 5:24:42 PM PST by Secret Agent Man (Gone Galt; Not averse to Going Bronson.)
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To: Dark Knight
If evolution consists of random genetic drift through purposeless mutation, with some combinations of genes resulting in death, some in benefits, and some being neutral enough to carry forward until further genetic drift determines fatality or benefit, then I think it is easy to look a a collection of useless DNA and say "It just happened, it's not bad enough to kill us, and now it's just there like a pile of junk."

But if it's not junk?

I think it makes it much harder to have faith that evolution consists of random genetic drift through purposeless mutation. Perhaps there is a design. Which to say: Perhaps there is a Designer.

4 posted on 12/15/2013 5:32:31 PM PST by ClearCase_guy
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To: Dark Knight

Liberal academics always think that anything that they don’t know the use for is “junk,” because anything they don’t know isn’t worth knowing.


5 posted on 12/15/2013 5:34:07 PM PST by E. Pluribus Unum (Who knew that one day professional wrestling would be less fake than professional journalism?)
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To: ClearCase_guy

Luckily nobody involved in evolution science thinks it’s random. Only creationists think that, it’s their favorite strawman that shows they don’t know what they’re talking about.


6 posted on 12/15/2013 5:35:27 PM PST by discostu (This is Jack Burton in the Pork Chop Express, and I'm talkin' to whoever's listenin' out there.)
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To: ClearCase_guy

“Perhaps there is a Designer. “

I think everyone can concede that. What people may not concede is “There is absolutely a 100% chance no doubt about it that evolution is bunk and there is a designer and a Christian one at that.”


7 posted on 12/15/2013 5:46:11 PM PST by staytrue
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To: discostu

What’s more amazing is how many of them keep repeating the strawman arguments like a broken record. It’s a kind of self-affirmation, I guess, like those head-banging Quran memorisers.


8 posted on 12/15/2013 5:52:00 PM PST by James C. Bennett (An Australian.)
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To: discostu

So evolution is not random. Do you mean to say that there is direction to it? Are random mutations responsible for new genetic information that through natural selection results in new or more advanced species?


9 posted on 12/15/2013 6:05:13 PM PST by Sicvee (Sicvee)
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To: Sicvee

No. No. And no.


10 posted on 12/15/2013 6:05:52 PM PST by discostu (This is Jack Burton in the Pork Chop Express, and I'm talkin' to whoever's listenin' out there.)
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To: staytrue

Even the thought that there is no God should strike absolute terror into a person, because if there is no God... that means that big burning thing in the sky could do ANYTHING at anytime and wipe out life as we know it.


11 posted on 12/15/2013 6:16:32 PM PST by TexasFreeper2009 (Obama lied .. the economy died.)
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To: TexasFreeper2009

You mean, like any one of the major natural disaster events that have happened in human history hundreds of times... Or the meteorite that took out the dinosaurs in a flash.


12 posted on 12/15/2013 6:42:08 PM PST by James C. Bennett (An Australian.)
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To: James C. Bennett

Your remark indicates a lack of understanding of the importance of the physical attributes of the male of any species in procreation. If males had no nipples, many of their daughters would be born without them.

In a former life I bred purebred hogs. When male piglets get to be a few weeks old, the little boar (male) pigs that are being raised for slaughter are castrated. When a boar pig is selected to be used for breeding and not castrated, he undergoes a close examination for possible defects which could be passed on to his progeny. One of the requirements for a swine breeding sire is that he must have at least 12 nipples, because that is just one of the things needed to be passed on to his daughters.

Sooo...the old chestnut we’ve heard through the years, e.g., that something or other is “as useless as tits on a boar hog” is wrong. The reason there are teats on boar hogs, and male humans, and many other species is because our Lord Jesus, Who created them all, knew they had to be there for proper procreation to take place. FYI.


13 posted on 12/15/2013 6:45:18 PM PST by Tucker39 (ed eith a hot iron.")
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To: Sicvee

We really don’t know what random means specifically. We can only approximate randomness very badly, and I’m not sure we can know what it is enough to use it well.

The burning question is in science, does nature conform to our rules for it?

I’d say no, our brains are wired to solve puzzles, so we make patterns out of nature to fit our limited ability to understand. The patterns we see are not the true aspect of nature, they just give us a way of understanding the chaos of nature.

If you like, the junk DNA theory was a junk hypothesis at the Nobel level. The really cool stuff for biology is just starting to happen now. I believe the above put into context why you cannot just substitute a strip of DNA into an organism without also dealing with the code from the above article. This will probably explain why just substituting did not work as well as hoped.

DK

GMO stuff included.


14 posted on 12/15/2013 6:52:28 PM PST by Dark Knight
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To: Tucker39

There is no real functional use for male nipples to be physically expressed on male bodies. Just because a father carries the genes that will determine the functioning of the ovaries of his daughter, doesn’t mean the father needs to have physical ovaries himself.

The reason why males have nipples is evolutionary. The default sex in embryos is female and male features develop from female templates from the action of male hormones activated by genes that code for them, initiated after the first few weeks post-conception. The male penis forms from what becomes the clitoris in females. In some cases, when the “designer” screws up, females develop prominent, large, penis-like clitorises. It’s all documented and studied.


15 posted on 12/15/2013 6:54:24 PM PST by James C. Bennett (An Australian.)
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To: Dark Knight

Ya just gotta love how “nature” codes the instructions for life. I wonder if I can get “nature” to code me a new operating system to take the place of Windows. I don’t see why not; after all, a PC operating system is only about a a thousand trillion times simpler than a Homo Sapiens.

Actually, I’m aiming to make a Panasonic CF-53 laptop computer with Windows 7 compatible operating system. I’ve filled a large beaker full of the elemental powders from which the laptop and operating system are formed, put some sea water in, and then bombarded the laptop soup in the beaker with simulated lightening. I expect that a digital chip will spontaneously form eventually and then will evolve into the PC after being bombarded by cosmic rays for some additional period of time.

I’m not too sure how long it will take to get my laptop that way, but am quite optimistic. I figure if organic life can spontaneously form in a similar fashion, a mere PC will take much less time.


16 posted on 12/15/2013 6:56:35 PM PST by catnipman (Cat Nipman: Vote Republican in 2012 and only be called racist one more time!)
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To: catnipman

generally speaking each tide pool can be thought of as a beaker, there are a lot of tide pools.

and if these tide pools have some oily film or lipid on the top and there is rain or splashing then there will be little encapsulated water filled bubbles contained within a lipid sphere.

each of these could be a test tube.

Over a billion years, we are talking about an astronomical number of “beakers” or test tubes. The number is so big, I might have trouble typing the number of zeros involved in a year.


17 posted on 12/15/2013 7:18:47 PM PST by staytrue
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To: staytrue

I think you can either ask God or Nature for a favor and get the same response.

“I put it in the darn store Catnipman, you just too cheap to buy it?”

DK


18 posted on 12/15/2013 7:22:37 PM PST by Dark Knight
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To: James C. Bennett

You obviously buy the inane evolution circular reasoning drivel.
Howdja like to buy a nice bridge?


19 posted on 12/15/2013 7:48:25 PM PST by Tucker39 (ed eith a hot iron.")
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To: Tucker39

You can keep your bridge and dance all day over it.

:)


20 posted on 12/15/2013 7:57:58 PM PST by James C. Bennett (An Australian.)
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