‘Junk DNA’

I particularly enjoyed Denyse’s comment here about how, according to some evolutionary theorists — who should be more accurately depicted as evolutionary storytellers — Darwinian evolution programmed us to find Darwinian evolution difficult to believe. This is called science? A much more reasonable explanation is that our minds were programmed to invent computer programs, and to find Darwinism difficult to believe because it makes no rational sense. But I digress from the theme of my post. I enjoyed Jonathan’s presentation about junk DNA at the link provided above. Let us presume that the genome does include junk. What does this have to do with the evidence for design found elsewhere, such as in the highly sophisticated, functionally integrated, information-processing machinery Read More ›

At PhysOrg.com, they have an article dealing with the CTCF protein and its binding sites. It turns out that the CTCF has both binding sites that are common to all mammalian lineages, and thus “conserved” and “ancient”, as well as binding sites found only in particular lineages. The binding sites found only in particular lineages are embedded inside “retro-transposons”, which “use a copy-paste mechanism to spread copies of themselves throughout the genome.” However: The retro-transposon’s copy-and-paste behaviour has long been considered totally self-serving. However, the study showed that when a retro-transposon containing a CTCF-binding sequence spreads around a mammal’s genome, it can deposit functional CTCF binding sites in novel locations, altering the activity of distant genes. Further: We looked at Read More ›

Here, at Sandwalk: “A twofer” Here’s Jonathan M’s post: “Thoughts on the ‘C-Value Enigma’, the ‘Onion Test’ and ‘Junk DNA.’”

This morning I was observing some of the recent comment thread activity on Uncommon Descent, and my attention was drawn to this comment by Nick Matzke on the subject of the “onion test” argument for junk DNA: I have [The Myth of Junk DNA], and all [Jonathan] Wells does is gloss past T. Ryan Gregory’s onion argument; Wells gives the more important point, the huge variability in genome size as a widespread pattern, much attention at all. Considering Wells’s book is the definitive ID treatment of the junk DNA issue, and us ID critics have been bashing ID for its complete failure on the genome-size variability issue for years, this was a huge omission on Wells’s part. Here, I offer Read More ›