
The Origin of the Term “Junk DNA”: A Historical Whodunnit (2013) - okket
https://judgestarling.tumblr.com/post/64504735261/the-origin-of-the-term-junk-dna-a-historical
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B1FF_PSUVM
For what it's worth, by 1988 the term was in SF novels such as David Zindell's
Neverness

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grillvogel
the whole concept of "junk dna" is hilarious to me and is emblematic of the
main problem with modern science, where everything we don't understand yet is
either not real, not possible, or not relevant

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nn3
In this case it's actually the other way around. There are good theoretical
arguments that without junk DNA at least human reproduction would be quite
difficult.

The average number of mutations per human generation is known and most
mutations are deleterious. They destroy something. The mutation rate is high
enough that the genome would quickly deteriorate over multiple generation.

But with most of the genome being junk most mutations don't matter, so this
problem isn't that serious, and humanity survives.

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twic
This would only be true if there was a roughly fixed number of mutations per
cell. There isn't. There's a roughly fixed chance of a mutation _per base of
DNA_ , so having more DNA just means you have proportionally more mutations.

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wingspar
From 2013

