Category: ‘Junk DNA’
Amazing! A new way “junk DNA” is useful, admitted
| April 11, 2018 | Posted by News under 'Junk DNA', Intelligent Design |
From ScienceDaily: Their findings, published recently in the journal eLife, indicate that this genetic “junk” performs the vital function of ensuring that chromosomes bundle correctly inside the cell’s nucleus, which is necessary for cell survival. And this function appears to be conserved across many species. This pericentromeric satellite DNA consists of a very simple, highly […]
Researcher: Dark DNA raises fundamental questions about evolution
| March 12, 2018 | Posted by News under 'Junk DNA', Evolution |
From Adam Hargreaves at New Scientist, No doubt you have heard of dark matter, which is thought to make up over a quarter of the universe. We know it’s there; we just haven’t been able to detect it. Well, something similar is afoot in the genome. My colleagues and I have dubbed this elusive genetic […]
Junk DNA watch: Alus can have their memory re-programmed on several levels
| January 31, 2018 | Posted by News under 'Junk DNA', Computing, AI, Cybernetics and Mechatronics, Intelligent Design |
From Sal Cordova at Creation-Evolution Headlines: Chris Rupe co-authored the book Contested Bones with John Sanford to tell about the inadequate evidence for human evolution. The book is almost entirely about bones and the fossil record, but there are 3 pages in that book that refute claims by evolutionary biologists that the human genome is […]
New hypothesis as to why flowering plants predominate
| January 15, 2018 | Posted by News under 'Junk DNA', Evolution, Genetics, Intelligent Design, Plants |
From ScienceDaily: Scientists have found an explanation for how flowering plants became dominant so rapidly in ecosystems across the world — a problem that Charles Darwin called an ‘abominable mystery’. In a study publishing on January 11 in the open access journal PLOS Biology, Kevin Simonin and Adam Roddy, from San Francisco State University and […]
Thought for the Day: “False sciences” make the method come first
| December 21, 2017 | Posted by News under 'Junk DNA', Intelligent Design, Philosophy, Science |
Philosopher Étienne Gilson (1884–1978): A scientist never begins by defining the method of the science he is about to initiate. Indeed, the surest way of recognizing false sciences is by the fact that they make the method come first. The method, however, should derive from the science, not the science from the method.” – Etienne […]
Viruses hijack “junk” (non-coding) RNA, turns out many non-coding functions “have not been identified”
| December 13, 2017 | Posted by News under 'Junk DNA', Intelligent Design |
From Nicholas S. Heaton & Bryan R. Cullen at Nature: Long non-coding RNAs (non-coding RNAs more than 200 nucleotides long) have roles in many aspects of cell biology4,5. In the nucleus, they are involved in transcriptional regulation and remodelling of chromosomes, and in the cytoplasm, they regulate microRNA function as well as the translation of mRNAs […]
Researchers: Junk DNA may have affected human uniqueness
| November 27, 2017 | Posted by News under 'Junk DNA', Animal minds, Intelligent Design, Mind |
From ScienceDaily: Duplications of large segments of noncoding [junk] DNA in the human genome may have contributed to the emergence of differences between humans and nonhuman primates, according to results presented at the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) 2017 Annual Meeting in Orlando, Fla. Identifying these duplications, which include regulatory sequences, and their effect […]
The “deteriorating” Y chromosome features new genes
| October 26, 2017 | Posted by News under 'Junk DNA', Darwinism, Genetics, Genomics, Intelligent Design |
From ScienceDaily: Researchers from the Institute of Population Genetics at Vetmeduni Vienna, using a new and highly specific analysis method, could now provide fresh momentum to help decode the evolutionary dynamics of the Y chromosome. Their study shows that ten times more new genes are transferred onto the Y chromosome in fruit flies than had […]
Researcher: Genome not an unstructured strand but “a highly structured and meaningful design”
| September 21, 2017 | Posted by News under 'Junk DNA', Cell biology, Informatics, Information, Intelligent Design |
From Mario Aguilera at U San Diego News: Intricate human physiological features such as the immune system require exquisite formation and timing to develop properly. Genetic elements must be activated at just the right moment, across vast distances of genomic space. “Promoter” areas, locations where genes begin to be expressed, must be paired precisely with […]
Researchers: “Junk DNA” lowers risk of heart disease
| August 30, 2017 | Posted by News under 'Junk DNA', Intelligent Design |
From ScienceDaily: Gene therapy using ‘junk DNA’ could lower risk for heart disease Scientists from UCLA and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute successfully used a gene that suppresses cholesterol levels as part of a treatment to reduce plaque in mice with a disorder called familial hypercholesterolemia. In a preclinical study, researchers found that the gene, […]
Noncoding (“junk”) RNA predominates in genome
| August 28, 2017 | Posted by News under 'Junk DNA', Intelligent Design |
From Jun-An Chen and Simon Conn at Genome Biology: Abstract: A report on the Second Aegean International Conference on the Long and the Short of Non-Coding RNAs, held in Heraklion, Greece, 9–14 June 2017. Investigations into gene regulation and disease pathogenesis have been protein-centric for decades. However, in recent years there has been a profound […]
Function of circular RNA in animals discovered
| August 11, 2017 | Posted by News under 'Junk DNA', Cell biology, Intelligent Design |
From Catherine Offord at the Scientist: Circular RNAs (circRNAs) have attracted growing attention in recent years, but their function in living organisms has long remained a mystery. Now, researchers report that one circRNA, Cdr1as, regulates microRNA levels in the mammalian brain, and that its removal results in abnormal neuronal activity and behavioral impairments in mice. […]
Rob Sheldon on the battle underlying “junk DNA”
| July 28, 2017 | Posted by News under 'Junk DNA', Intelligent Design |
Our physics color commentator Rob Sheldon offers some thoughts on junk DNA, the claim that most of the human genome does nothing (often an argument for explicitly Darwinian evolution): a) Chance is the truly unfalsifiable hypothesis, because all it gives you is a number. 1:10, 1:10^500 are all the same as far as the Darwinist […]
Junk DNA: Dan Graur (junk!), ENCODE team (not junk!), and the science media
| July 19, 2017 | Posted by News under 'Junk DNA' |
Graur’s latest claim that 75% of the human genome is non-functional has attracted a lot of digital ink. Pop science loves that sort of thing. From Kerry Grens at the Scientist: Up to 25 percent of the human genome is critical, while the rest has no function, according to a study published July 11 in […]
Anything I Remove Without Causing Immediate Catastrophe Must Be Junk
| July 15, 2017 | Posted by johnnyb under 'Junk DNA' |
I was in the server room with my system administrator the other day, discussing how we could cut costs in the server room.
Salvador Cordova Talks about DNA and Non-DNA Inheritance
| July 14, 2017 | Posted by johnnyb under 'Junk DNA', Evolutionary biology |
These are a pair of videos from the AM-Nat Biology conference. I have had lots of other things going on so I’ve been slow getting these up, but Salvador’s talks became more relevant as Dan Graur doubles down to try to prove that the genome is mostly junk. You can get the rest of the […]
Non-coding RNA: More uses for the “junk” in our genome
| March 12, 2017 | Posted by News under 'Junk DNA', Intelligent Design |
A paper at Nature from Karen Adelman & Emily Egan (Nature 543, 183–185 (09 March 2017) doi:10.1038/543183a) It emerges that nascent non-coding RNAs transcribed from regulatory DNA sequences called enhancers bind to the enzyme CBP to promote its activity locally. In turn, the activities of CBP stimulate further enhancer transcription. (paywall) More. See also: Cod […]
Cod gene puzzle: At least no one is claiming it is “junk DNA”
| March 7, 2017 | Posted by News under 'Junk DNA', Evolution, Genetics, Intelligent Design, News |
From ScienceDaily: Researchers at the University of Oslo (UiO) keep discovering surprises in the Atlantic cod genome. The most recent study has revealed an unusual amount of short and identical DNA sequences, which might give cod an evolutionary advantage. Or else it is something the cod could live with or else it makes no difference […]
Now not 7 but 47 mRNA start codons?!
| March 1, 2017 | Posted by DLH under 'Junk DNA', Cell biology, Design inference, Genomics, Intelligent Design, Proteome |
“The grammar of DNA might be even more sophisticated than we imagined . . .It could be that all codons could be start codons”
“Junk RNA” helps embryos sort themselves out
| February 1, 2017 | Posted by News under 'Junk DNA', News |
By limiting what cells can become. From Joshua A. Krisch at The Scientist: The results suggest that a particular class of noncoding RNA works in concert with the latent viral elements of the genome work to limit stem cell potential, and that removing a key miRNA can lift this limitation—at least in vitro. “At first […]
