From at ScienceDaily: Mammals will develop ovaries and become females unless the early sex organs have enough of a protein called SOX9 at a key stage in their development. SOX9 causes these organs to become testes, which then direct the rest of the embryo to become male. The amount of SOX9 produced is controlled initially […]
‘Junk DNA’
At Quanta: Cells need almost all of their genes, even the “junk DNA”
From Veronique Greenwood at Quanta: By knocking out genes three at a time, scientists have painstakingly deduced the web of genetic interactions that keeps a cell alive. Researchers long ago identified essential genes that yeast cells can’t live without, but new work, which appears today in Science, shows that looking only at those gives a […]
Amazing! A new way “junk DNA” is useful, admitted
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
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
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
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
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”
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
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
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”
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
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
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
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”
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 […]