

Junk DNA — Not So Useless After All - jalanco
http://healthland.time.com/2012/09/06/junk-dna-not-so-useless-after-all/?xid=rss-topstories&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+time%2Ftopstories+%28TIME%3A+Top+Stories%29

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jonathansizz
It's really sad that much of the public get their scientific beliefs from
misleading press releases that lead to utterly incorrect headlines and
articles like this, and the ENCODE consortium should be ashamed of themselves.
They've done lots of damage that many other scientists will have to spend time
and effort to correct.

splatterdash posted a link to an excellent summary of the problems in this
thread, and I'd add a couple more links:
<http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=1172> and
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnfarrell/2012/09/07/reports-o...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnfarrell/2012/09/07/reports-
of-junk-dnas-demise-have-been-greatly-exaggerated/)

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splatterdash
There has been a lot of buzz in the (scientific) twitter/blogo-sphere
regarding this. The main point of contention is essentialy the % of functional
element ENCODE annotates. As it turns out, their criteria of denoting a DNA
element as 'functional' is debatable (i.e. a DNA sequence with biochemical
activity). These elements when deleted from the genome often has no visible
phenotypic change to the organism (us), which is why the % they put is
believed to be way too much.

Here's a recent excellent blog post on the issue, in readable form to the
layman: <http://selab.janelia.org/people/eddys/blog/?p=683>

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dawgr
Maybe not observable effects. There so many tiny things that must be in our
genes that switches that affect anatomy are probably a small percentage. For
example, the way people's laughs sound or the fact that almost everyone is
attracted to paradisiacal places are probably influenced by genes and not just
culture and nurture.

~~~
splatterdash
That is one possibility. But with subtle things like that, the trick is to
come up with an experiment that either supports or falsifies them. Until such
data exist, it remains a mere hypothesis.

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guard-of-terra
Sorry, but it was obvious to me for years.

DNA is a program. Programs contain data and code. They also contain all sorts
of control sections. This stuff is there for a reason and we should think by
default that genetic code will have those too.

(For those who think DNA is not a program because it is environment and state
dependent - sorry, computer programs are very adaptable beasts too)

Another frequent misunderstanding - any running program looks like it has most
of its code never used. This is false, because code falls under 90%/10% law.
90% of code is needed 10% of time. The time for those "dead" genes will come
more often than not, and they will fire.

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tymekpavel
This is far from a revelation, and this article is just popularizing what has
been known for [at least] the past 2 decades. Several scientists have built
their careers on studying so-called "junk DNA" since the 1990s. See Jurka
2007:

"Eukaryotic genomes contain vast amounts of repetitive DNA derived from
transposable elements (TEs). Large-scale sequencing of these genomes has
produced an unprecedented wealth of information about the origin, diversity,
and genomic impact of what was once thought to be 'junk DNA.'"

<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17506661>

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latimer
Reminded me of something I read in an article "The Insanity Virus" a few years
back.

> _If our DNA were an airplane carry-on bag (and essentially it is), it would
> be bursting at the seams. We lug around 100,000 retro­virus sequences inside
> us; all told, genetic parasites related to viruses account for more than 40
> percent of all human DNA. Our body works hard to silence its viral stowaways
> by tying up those stretches of DNA in tight stacks of proteins, but
> sometimes they slip out._

HN discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1938618>

