Posted on 10/06/2003 4:34:06 PM PDT by blam
Scientists vie to break junk DNA's secret code
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
(Filed: 06/10/2003)
Huge tracts of human DNA, previously written off as meaningless junk, have been found to contain a hitherto unrecognised "genetic grammar", making the language of our genes much more complex than previously thought.
The discovery is of potentially huge significance, since it could lead to an entirely new explanation for certain diseases and symptoms. A race is now on among teams of scientists worldwide to investigate this cryptic code.
While the genetic recipe of a human being is spelt out with three billion letters of DNA code, only about two per cent of these correspond to the genes - the DNA that describes the proteins that build and operate bodies.
In the latest issue of the journal Science, Prof Stylianos Antonarakis of the University of Geneva Medical School, Dr Ewen Kirkness of the Institute of Genomic Research, Maryland, and colleagues have reported compelling evidence that up to three per cent of our genetic material has a crucial role that is not understood.
They made the unexpected discovery that some DNA regions of humans, dogs and species as distant as elephant and wallaby are nearly identical. These regions of what were once called junk have been dubbed "conserved non-genic sequences", or CNGs, a reference to how they are not conventional genes.
Prof Antonarakis said: "I suspect that mutations in CNGs may contribute to numerous genetic disorders." Defects in CNGs could result in illness while the symptoms of Down's syndrome, caused by an extra copy of a chromosome, might be linked to the presence of additional CNGs.
"Many laboratories are now working on identifying pathogenic mutations," he said.
Back in the 1980s, my cousin was proudly displaying his landscape contractor's license and explaining how many courses he had to take and all the stuff about plants he had to learn to earn it; I asked him what a weed was and he said, without blinking an eye, "An undesirable plant."
Only evolutionists, real scientists knew very well that the rest has tremendous importance.
You're both conveniently overlooking the fact mentioned in the article that only 3% of the non-coding DNA has been found to be "conserved" (IOW varies less among organisms than it should if evolving without functional constraint, therefore suggesting that it has some sequence dependent function).
This leaves the vast majority of "junk" DNA as still, to all appearance, junk.
A scientific theory should not be called upon to prove or disprove the existence of God. Evolutionists, like most scientists, are uncomfortable taking a scientific theory and applying it to theology.
The best science can, and should, do is explain how the universe started (big bang etc.) and how we got to where we are today as a species (evolution). The question of WHY this happened and WHO, if anyone, was behind it is a question best left to priests and rabbis. The Bible is not a physics or biology textbook.
Yes. But you will soon be exposed to the views of those who think otherwise. Brace yourself.
Or, to put it in Orwellian terms: DNA is more than Duckspeak.
If you'll pardon a bit of schadenfreud, I always love it when scientific smugness is shown up for what it is.....
I much prefer scientists who are humble about what the do and don't know.
A different quote comes to mind: Huge ... tracts of land....
I've never really understood this need by Biblical literalists to be, well, literal about the Bible. Especially when faced with real-world evidence to the contrary. The way I see it, Genesis is a creation story as told to a technologically primitive people who had a very limited understanding of physics, biology, chemistry etc. As our understanding of science increases, we can flesh out the very general description of the Beginning given to us in Genesis.
Only if this article is taken in isolation. We know of the importance of telomeres, centromeres, LINES, SINES, GATAs, GC-rich regions, etc., all "junk DNA". Actual junk has dwindled to about 40% of the genome. But that term "junk" is catchy and appealing.
I think it's pretty much the same impulse that drives those on the other side of the fence to tout evolution as "proof" that there is no God.
Speaking for myself, I don't have any problem with the idea that God and evolution (in some form or other) are compatible.
If there actually was any of that "scientific smugness" there wouldn't be any research. We'd know it all.
Sure there's smugness -- look at all those scientists who "know" all about global warming, for instance. Or, for that matter, those who dismissed those huge tracts of DNA as "junk."
Scientific smugness is very real, and you're right about its effects: there have always been lots of areas of research that are "not respectable," because the best scientific minds "know better."
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