Another accidental use for “junk DNA”

From: PhysOrg

Telomeres stay intact in most cancer cell types by means of a specialized enzyme called telomerase that adds the repetitive telomere DNA sequences to the ends of chromosomes. Cancer cells can also use a second method involving a DNA-repair-based mechanism, called alternative lengthening of telomeres, or ALT for short. In general, cancer cells take over either type of telomere maintenance machinery to become immortal. Overall, about fifteen percent of cancers (those of cartilage, bone, and brain, for example) use the ALT process for telomere lengthening and maintenance.

PaV

Ahmedkiaan @ 70: More rubbish from the atheist fool who continues to come back for more lessons. That's good, son. Keep coming back. Maybe you will learn something from one of the more compassionate members here. They have more patience with fools like you than I do. Truth Will Set You Free

AK: Either illuminate, or remain silent. PaV

If the vast medical knowledge on HIV is completely erroneous, not only is that an extremely important story for humankind, but it would also establish the lies and deceit of the scientific community, which would reinforce ID. In other words, if you are correct, you--and the world--have an enormous amount to gain by fully and comprehensively making the case, and you have a platform for it, right here, and you could make the case immediately, on the front page of this very website. By contrast, I have nothing to gain by explaining anything, so I won't. I hope to see a full, powerful case laid out against HIV science. It could be a very productive and informative thread! AhmedKiaan

PaV @ 68: Don't hold your breath waiting to be illuminated by that one. He is without understanding. Thinking themselves wise... Truth Will Set You Free

AK: I ask you to illuminate us; and your response is to ask me to illuminate you. Please, go first. PaV

You got me there, by golly. Checkmated me. Sure did! Truth Will Set You Free

TWSYF, I think its about time you started. Your condition may be treatable. Pindi

I don't take meds. Never have. Are you really concerned about my health...Swine? Truth Will Set You Free

TWSYF - have you perchance been skipping your meds? You sound like you are about to explode. Pindi

Ahmedkiaan @ 62: My God, man. Do us all a favor and die already. It doesn't really matter does it...if you die? Be gone and do the world a favor. It's all just a bunch of molecules changing places anyway. What does it matter? Truth Will Set You Free

In fact I will cease bothering you on this thread and eagerly await an upcoming post where you outline the situation as you see it, and the relevant issues and questions, described in your own terms so there is no confusion. I think it would be a potentially very fruitful thread. AhmedKiaan

PaV, if you have serious objections to the medical knowledge regarding HIV, AIDS, the evolution of the virus, etc. you should take the opportunity to write up a front-page post comprehensively explaining your view of the situation, asking what you think are the pertinent questions, and so forth. This is a big, big topic, and it deserves its own thread. AhmedKiaan

AK: I'm glad you're amazed. Now, what about responses? You're free to illuminate. I will admit that the example of tuberculosis is a bit exaggerated, but only to make the point of the very bizarre manner in which HIV/AIDS is handled. I don't think there's ever been anything before like what we see happening with HIV/AIDs. PaV

"Ahmed is relatively new to this forum and up to this point it has been abundantly clear that he struggles to understand the issues being discussed here, " To be fair, any educated person would struggle to understand what is going on here. AhmedKiaan

LOL. My national CAP microbio license expired over a decade ago. Your notions are ...amazing. AhmedKiaan

AK: Does it amaze you that someone distrust the "scientific consensus" on HIV? It amazes me that the questions Duesberg asked in 1987 have yet to be answered. BTW, what "disease" does HIV 'cause'? Rubella produces rubella, and mumps produces mumps, and polio causes polio. What does HIV cause? Well, any one of a list of 24 diseases. So, for example, if you die from tuberculosis and they test your blood and find HIV present (the antibodies at least), then that person didn't die of tuberculosis, but of AIDS. Who has ever heard of such a thing? Haven't you the courage to ask difficult questions? Are you like the U.S. media, compliant? PaV

AhmedKiaan: Holey moley

Ahmed is relatively new to this forum and up to this point it has been abundantly clear that he struggles to understand the issues being discussed here, but today he makes a point. Well done Ahmed! "Holey moley" indeed. Why is it "anti-science" to ask questions like:

... if HIV starts in Africa and spreads to America, surely there would ‘outbreaks’ along the way, right? Well, where are they?

Origenes

Holy moley. AhmedKiaan

As to "Using the methods of evolutionary biology . . . " this only means that they know the mutation rate of the virus and they compare sequences. Has HIV become a squid? No. It only changes here and there. That's not evolution. That's change. PaV

wd400: Help me to understand your logic here: You say: "The oldest HIV viruses are from the late 50s, and come from ppl that died of AIDS associated diseases." I asked you this: "But it didn’t become AIDS until it got to San Francisco in the 1980’s? " If you state (following your wikipedia search) that someone had AIDS in the late 50's, this doesn't help explain in the least why the outbreak didn't occur somewhere in Africa---say, some major city. Again, why did it have to wait for over 20 years and then show up in San Francisco? Can you answer this? IOW, if HIV starts in Africa and spreads to America, surely there would 'outbreaks' along the way, right? Well, where are they? Duesberg argues that HIV is a passenger virus and hurts no one, and that immune suppression comes from the use of poppers (amyl nitrate) and drug use. His theory has the advantage of explaining why we first see it in San Francisco and not halfway between Africa and the Bay Area. Please help me understand this better. PaV

If you got as far as reading the article you'd know there is no virus from the 20s. Using the methods of evolutionary biology, scientists have inferred that the virus jumped to humans around the turn of the 20th century, and the pandemic strain arose in the Belgian Congo around the 20s. The oldest HIV viruses are from the late 50s, and come from ppl that died of AIDS associated diseases. If you asking why colonial doctors in the Belgian Congo didn't find AIDS you have a little too learn about colonialism in Africa. I'm not going to engage you any further on this topic. The reality of HIV and AIDS is so readily available for anyone can Google that it's not worth wasting time on contrarianism. wd400

But they do. There's HIV virus from the 20's.

From the 1920s until 1960, the pandemic HIV strain – there were others that fizzled out – spread from Kinshasa, crossed borders to other nations, and ultimately landed on distant continents. It has infected nearly 75 million people worldwide to date.

But it didn't become AIDS until it got to San Francisco in the 1980's? Is that suppose to make any sense at all? Your answer please. PaV

The answer to your question on 43 is "they don't". Someone that just wanted to know the truth should have no trouble working that out... wd400

All I ask is for explanations that make sense, and that are backed up with evidence. Along these lines, why don't you answer my question? PaV

Well you went and answered anyway: crank magnetism in full effect. wd400

From The History of Rubella and Rubella Vaccination Leading to Elimination

Congenital rubella syndrome (CRS) was discovered in the 1940s, rubella virus was isolated in the early 1960s, and rubella vaccines became available by the end of the same decade. Systematic vaccination against rubella, usually in combination with measles, has eliminated both the congenital and acquired infection from some developed countries, most recently the United States, as is confirmed by the articles in this supplement.

HIV was "discovered" in the early 80's. Where's the vaccine? Did you know that the HIV 'virus' has not really present in humans? You have to use a specific process on cell cultures before you see any 'virus' at all. HIV testing 'tests' for the presence of 'antigens,' not isolation of the virus itself. PaV

wd400: Answer my question first (@43), and then I'll answer yours. PaV

wd400,, speaking of antiscience positions, and since you personally believe that you are much, much, smarter than anyone who dares doubt unguided evolution built all the different lifeforms on earth in all their unfathomable complexities, perhaps you would like to tell us exactly why, since it has no rigid demarcation criteria, Darwinism qualifies as a science, instead of as a pseudo-science, in the first place? I know you think it beneath yourself to even acknowledge my existence on these pages, but I would appreciate it if you would humble yourself to teach us 'IDiots' and at least lay out the precise case for why you personally think unguided evolution even qualifies as a science, instead of a pseudo-science, in the first place. And when and if you honestly engage this subject, I will then happily show you why it does not qualify as a rigid science but is in fact a pseudo-science. Moreover, I will show you exactly why it qualifies as the most antiscientific theory to ever be advanced in the history of modern science. bornagain77

Are you actually adding HIV-AIDS denialsm to your quiver of antiscience positions? wd400

BTW, do you know that they have HIV virus from the 1920's? Why didn't AIDS appear in the 20's? Can anyone answer that? PaV

Just out today: Formation of new chromatin domains determines pathogenicity of genomic duplications PaV

When the only place you can find support is an article from an HIV/AIDs denier hosted by an anti-vaccination website you might be a long way out on a very thin limb... # Really PaV? HIV/AIDs denialist, and anti-vaccer site?

When did the genetic fallacy become a logical argument against anything? Vy

rvb8: Peter Duesberg was the preeminent virologist in the United States at the time of HIV discovery. But because he thought Robert Gallo was wrong in his assertion that HIV caused AIDs, he was systematically marginalized, his lab resources were reduced, and graduate students taken away from him. Why? Had he had a stroke, or a brain tumor that affected his thinking? No. Had he had some kind of psychotic break? No. He just didn't agree with the "consensus" view. So they set out to destroy him. And what was the "consensus" view in the middle 80's? That a vaccine would be developed in two years time. Tell me, rvb8, are you aware of any vaccine for HIV? I'm not. Fascism, even if it is practiced by scientists, is unhealthy and harmful. That's the whole point of UD. PaV

I've just been following this exchange and can not add to the argument, I believe 'wd', has things well in hand. Really PaV? HIV/AIDs denialist, and anti-vaccer site? rvb8

I knew that is exactly how you would respond. The "only" place. Really. Go put your head back into the sand. PaV

When the only place you can find support is an article from an HIV/AIDs denier hosted by an anti-vaccination website you might be a long way out on a very thin limb... wd400

Here's what they say:

'In many cases, translocations are what turn a normal cell into a cancer cell,' co-author Albino Bacolla said. Bacolla is a research associate in the Vasquez Lab. 'What we found in our study was that the sites of chromosome breaks are not random along the DNA double helix; instead, they occur preferentially at specific locations,' Bacolla said. 'Cruciforms structures in the DNA, built by the short inverted repeats, mark the spots for chromosome breaks, mutations, and potentially initiate cancer development.'

Not random, eh? Sounds like epigenetics to me---and not neo-Darwinism. PaV

Sampling "the aneuploid fitness landscape. . . ," though it involves mutations, is outside the 'gene-centric' view of traditional population genetics. Neo-Darwinism explains very little. Please consult Behe's book: The Edge of Evolution. PaV

From the web:

The current emphasis in cancer research on the search for mutant genes in a perpetual background of aneuploidy is a classic example of not seeing the forest for the trees. Thomas Kuhn remarked that the great theoretical advances of Copernicus, Newton, Lavoisier, and Einstein had less to do with definitive experiments than with looking at old data from a new perspective.Sufficient (indeed overwhelming) evidence is already in hand to convict aneuploidy of the crime of cancer and release gene mutations from custody [6-17]. Nevertheless, the gene-mutation theorists, when faced with the undeniable evidence that aneuploidy is necessary for cancer, have adopted a fall-back position. They argue that gene mutations must initiate the aneuploidy [18], or as the Scientific American reported, referring to a researcher in Vogelstein’s lab, "[Christoph] Lengauer insists aneuploidy must be a consequence of gene mutations" [1].

Here's the citation #18 from the quote above. And this is also interesting. PaV

BrianFraser @18: As a follow up to the comments @20 --confirming that the answer you got @19 is grossly incomplete and inaccurate at the best-- you may want to look at the paper reference posted @2117 in this link: https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/intelligent-design/mystery-at-the-heart-of-life/#comment-618883 Enjoy it! Dionisio

I know about CIN and other cancer cell karyotypes... what I was asking for was evidence for your claim that a "gene centric" view had lead cancer biologists to ignore chromosomes. You're own links mention that this has been a topic of investigation for many decades. That last paper you link is pretty interesting though, isnt' it. Good example of how evolutionary biology informs cancer biology, and how cancer phenotypes (like chomromosome misegration) are brought about by genetic mutations. wd400

In summary, it is evident that chromosome missegregation may be as important a factor in tumor development as DNA mutations and chromosomal translocations. Until recently, little attention has been paid to the process of whole-chromosome imbalance. Given the widespread relevance of CIN in human cancers, understanding the mechanisms that lead to chromosome missegregation, the role it plays in the evolution of tumors, and the potential for therapeutic intervention will provide a significant improvement in our ability to find cures for resistant cancers.

Here's the paper. PaV

From: from a two-minute google search:

The most striking visual hallmark of cancer cells is their abnormal number of chromosomes and chromosome arms. This feature, known as aneuploidy, was first seen in 1914 by Theodor Boveri who observed that tumor cells consistently display an abnormal number of chromosomes—either missing entirely, missing parts, or copied over as extras—compared to normal diploid cells. Yet a century after Boveri, scientists still aren’t exactly sure if aneuploidy and other kinds of related chromosomal mayhem drive tumorigenesis or if they are simple bystanders. An answer to this longstanding conundrum has now emerged from a new computational study by Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator Stephen J. Elledge and colleagues at Harvard Medical School who present evidence that aneuploidy patterns of chromosome deletion or amplification that are recurrent among tumors actually represent a driving force during tumor evolution and are very frequent in cancer.

One hundred years of looking for point mutations, when all along, aneuploidy was staring everyone in the face. That's how scientific dogma (mutations are the cause of all that ails us) can prove harmful. PaV

So your game is to put words into my mouth? And you're too lazy to look things up? PaV

So it's dangerous to be knowledgeable, and you have no intention of providing evidence to support your claims? wd400

wd400:

Sure, though of course my perspective in this case has the advantage of being informed by reality.

Isn't also possible, if not likely, that this "informed" position is a disadvantage since it is filled with presuppositions that go unchallenged? It was not an "informed" and "knowledgeable" adult who told the Emperor that he had no clothes, but a simple child.

You’ll have to provide details about how gene-centric view blinkered doctors and scientists from studying chromosomes in cancer, or indeed what progress might have been made with the technologies available to researchers when they were so blinkered if they’d focused on chormosomes instead of genes.

No, I don't. You can look for the information yourself. I'm quoting authors who have studied the field and written papers. Just look around. PaV

butifnot, You may want to look at the paper reference posted @2109-2111 here: https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/intelligent-design/mystery-at-the-heart-of-life/#comment-618798 As you can see, the comment @19 is embarrassingly off the target. :) Genuine humility is a required attitude for approaching scientific research seriously. Unfortunately it's very rare these days. That's why we see so much pseudoscientific hogwash within otherwise interesting research papers. Really pathetic. Dionisio

butifnot, @24 I was referring to your comments @23. Regarding your comments @22:

Which is more amazing – The blithe dismissal of the stunningly incredible engineering we are discovering Or the engineering of life itself ?

I believe the former is just the natural human rebellious attitude against our responsibility to test everything and hold onto what's right. I don't think there's anything amazing in that. The latter is indeed far beyond amazing, which should lead us to contemplate it in awe and worship the Creator. Dionisio

butifnot, Yes, that's a good analogy. Thank you. However, in this case it's much worse than that. We humans (including scientists) still don't know all the ingredients that go into the enchilada. But definitely are clueless about the recipe and many don't realize it takes a knowledgeable chef to get the enchilada ready to eat. :) All that said, I won't be surprised if there's some mess in the biological systems, after the messy history since the beginning of humanity. Portions of the genome could be messed up too. Historically we haven't taken good care of ourselves or the environment. Instead we have messed things up badly. Had we stayed in Eden, things would have been much cleaner and in good shape. But we prefer to do things our way instead of our Creator's way. Too late, can't complain now. Actually, it's amazing how robust the biological systems are. After so much messing things up through human history, a less robust system would have stopped functioning long ago. BTW, the robustness is another layer of complexity added to a complex system. The whole enchilada is complex complexity on steroids. We look forward with increasing anticipation to reading future research papers describing new discoveries that shed more light on the beautifully elaborate informational choreographies orchestrated within the biological systems. :) Dionisio

Origenes #21 et all Ingredients versus the recipe, and the 'cook' butifnot

Which is more amazing - The blithe dismissal of the stunningly incredible engineering we are discovering Or the engineering of life itself ? butifnot

Brian Faser #18,

Brian Faser: What part of DNA codes for shapes? What encodes the shape and length and location of a bone? What encodes facial features? Doesn’t DNA code for things besides proteins?

I have asked very similar questions to Larry Moran and wd400:

If most of our genome is junk, then where is the information stored for the (adult) body plan? Where is the information stored for e.g. the brain? And where is the information stored for how to build all this?

Their answers:

Larry Moran: …. experts do not see a need to encode body plans and brain in our genome …

wd400: If it is not clear enough, there is no over-arching “plan” in the genome. There are genes, that have regulatory elements, which produce gene produces respond to environments and influence other genes and so on and so on.

Eric Anderson summarized their position as follows:

Eric Anderson: … this thread may have uncovered at least one aspect of the simplistic thinking that leads a person to believe that most DNA is junk. After all, the thinking goes, all we need to do is specify some parts in the DNA and the machine will build itself all by chemistry. It’s easy! No plan needed. No program required. Just specify some gene products and we’re done. Everything else is probably just junk. Amazing what chemistry can do.

- - - A more principled problem for neo-Darwinism (and neutral theory) is that DNA is simply at the wrong level to organize things. In his book ‘Darwin’s Doubt’, Stephen Meyer offers the following analogies:

At a construction site, builders will make use of many materials: lumber, wires, nails, drywall, piping, and windows. Yet building materials do not determine the floor plan of the house or the arrangement of houses in a neighborhood. Similarly, electronic circuits are composed of many components, such as resistors, capacitors, and transistors. But such lower-level components do not determine their own arrangement in an integrated circuit …. In a similar way, DNA does not by itself direct how individual proteins are assembled into these larger systems or structures—cell types, tissues, organs, and body plans—during animal development.

“Detailed information at the level of the gene does not serve to explain form.” [Müller and Newman, “Origination of Organismal Form,” 8]

Origenes

BrianFraser @18: Excellent questions. However, the answer you got @19 is incomplete at the best. Let's suppose you don't know much about music. One day you listen to Beethoven's 9th Symphony and ask how is that music produced? The answer you got @19 is analogous to saying that there is an orchestra that uses sheet music and several instruments. That wouldn't answer your question, would it? You would expect a better explanation, wouldn't you? The sentence @19 "The details are pretty complex..." is a gross understatement. The real thing is complex complexity on steroids. The final picture is not ready yet. Don't let anyone fool you. For example, check this out: https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/intelligent-design/mystery-at-the-heart-of-life/#comment-618792 If we pay attention to details, any biology research paper we read may provoke a series of "how?" and "why?" questions. Perhaps sometimes those fundamental questions are overlooked. All we need is to recover the sense of wonder we had when we were children. Keep asking questions. The more, the better. Don't worry if a professor from the U of T in Canada says that you don't ask honest questions. Actually, that would be a nice compliment. :) Dionisio

Hi Brian, The shape and length of bones are encoded in DNA... through protein coding genes (and functional RNAs) and through the regulation of gene expression. The details are pretty complex, but something like the action of FGF and WNT proteins in limb buds should give you and idea how these processes work. wd400

What part of DNA codes for shapes? What encodes the shape and length and location of a bone? What encodes facial features? Doesn't DNA code for things besides proteins? Just wondering. BrianFraser

Origenes, Moran is being skeptical of the claim that there a are millions of enhancers. There certainly aren't millions of known enhcnacers, GP, I'm talking about the press release and the parroting of it by News. The paper is certainly an achievement (most importantly, I think, for being able to find small effects). If 10% of the predicted enhancers turned out to be something that would be interesting, but that hasn't happened. PaV,

Obviously you have a different view of these things. Yet, it is beyond conjecture that the ‘gene-centric’ view of biologists certainly kept doctors and researchers locked into looking at particular genes when it came to cancer, and so kept them away from looking at the increasingly apparent role that chromosomes themselves play in oncogenesis.

Sure, though of course my perspective in this case has the advantage of being informed by reality. You'll have to provide details about how gene-centric view blinkered doctors and scientists from studying chromosomes in cancer, or indeed what progress might have been made with the technologies available to researchers when they were so blinkered if they'd focused on chormosoomes instead of genes. wd400

wd400: Obviously you have a different view of these things. Yet, it is beyond conjecture that the 'gene-centric' view of biologists certainly kept doctors and researchers locked into looking at particular genes when it came to cancer, and so kept them away from looking at the increasingly apparent role that chromosomes themselves play in oncogenesis. This is no more than a cautionary note as to the harm that comes from being locked into the "consensus view." It affects physics, just like it affects biology. We're dealing with human beings---and, more practically with governmental funding agencies staffed by humans---and so a certain amount of this is unavoidable; however, it's up to the scientists themselves to make sure it remains limited. But, once again, you seem to miss the larger point: Moran calculates 200 enhancers per gene. Well, doesn't this paint a much more complex view of what "fitness" means---the very concept that lies at the bottom of neo-Darwinism. "Fitness" needs to be rethought. And the incredible complexity we see more and more of in cellular life needs to be reckoned with, and not just ignored. How do you get 20,000 genes and 2 million enhancers to work together? To say random forces can bring this all about just staggers the mind. PaV

wd400: I must disagree with you about this paper. While I certainly agree that enhancers have been known for a long time as functional DNA, this is probably the first attempt at identifying all possible enhancers involved in the function of one specific organ (the heart) by specific bioinformatic methods applied to the whole genome. The quantitative results are important. They find that about 8% of the whole genome is a candidate, and they also try to narrow that quantity by a score. Now, even is only 10% of that were confirmed as having a specific enhancer function for the heart, that would still be an important result. In the end, continuing this kind of analysis, we could reasonably find that a much bigger part of non coding DNA is involved in enhancer activity than previously thought. That would be an important achievement, don't you agree? gpuccio

Are “enhancers” considered to be part of “Junk-DNA” or not? Wd400 suggests in post #1 that this is obviously not the case and I, trusting that no one is his right mind would do such a thing, affirmed the obvious in post #2: “Surely, those thousands of mapped enhancers were not considered junk-DNA.” However, now I’m not so sure: Here Larry Moran discusses a paper by W. de Laat et al. Larry summarizes their position on enhancers thusly:

Larry Moran: The authors claim that there are millions of enhancers in the human genome. If we take "millions" to mean just two million then there are, on average, one hundred enhancers per gene. This means that expression of each gene in our genome is regulated, on average, by the binding of 100 transcription factors to 100 transcription factor binding sites (= enhancers). Thus, a lot of our genome (40%) is devoted to regulation.

If these “enhancers” are not considered “junk-DNA”, as wd400 claims, then the human genome has, at the very least, less than 60% junk-DNA. Right? Yet, at another blog post by Larry we can also learn the following numbers:

Total Essential/Functional (so far) = 8.7% Total Junk (so far) = 65% Unknown (probably mostly junk) = 26.3%

IOWs most of the “enhancers” that W. de Laat et al speak of is considered to be “total Junk” or “probably mostly junk”. Why? That’s not very clear. Larry again:

Larry Moran: It also can't be a general rule that the average gene is regulated by one hundred transcription factor binding sites. That doesn't make any sense. Why would most genes need this level of control?

“Why would most genes need this level of control?” Now, that’s a weird question. Origenes

Neo-Darwinists, OTOH, limiting themselves to only ‘coding’ DNA, have thrown science off the proper track of discovering where ‘disease’ lies. Apparently, it’s not with the “genes,” but with the ‘enhancers.’

You are pretty good at the destroying these strawmen, maybe you should step up to critiquing the actual science. Neo-Darwinists have never limited themselves to protein coding genes. King and Wilson were already concluding that much evolution ocurred by altering gene regulation in 1975. Once we started being able to study evo-devo in the 1990s, it became increasingly clear that cis-regulatory evolution was indeed important. The methods used to discoved gene-disease associations (GWAS, or earlier linkage mapping) are agnostic as to wether a disease-causing variant is protein coding or not. So, even if those big bad Darwinists had been misleading everyone, they wouldn't have prevented people from finding disase-associated alleles in non-coding sequences. wd400

Origines, If we have found thousands of enchancers then we probably weren't discounting all non-coding sequences as junk... right?

Or is there another method — besides knocking out the heart enhancers in the genome and look at heart function — to establish that these genetic regions are heart enhancers?

Sequence motifs associated with cardiac transcription factors, conserved motifs near to known cardiac genes, homology to variants in model species, molecular interaction data from lab experiments... wd400

Origenes, Part of the reason for the study is to find new ways to identify enhancers. This site talks about it, and references the study in the op: http://newscenter.lbl.gov/2014/03/24/new-technique-for-identifying-gene-enhancers/ If the way of identifying them was by disabling part of the genome then only a few would be known instead of thousands. But, true, you can't be really sure until disabling that part of the genome, and right now it seems to be the only way to know what would happen if the enhancer was disabled. That's why they were curious as to what would happen, because it had never been done before for any heart enhancer. But the point is that there were never just two categories of dna, stuff that directly codes for dna, and junk, as the op implies. goodusername

This study conclusively links enhancers to proper heart function. Maybe the 'genes' (sequences that code) are critical to there being a heart in the first place, but 'enhancers' are what make it work 'properly.' I suppose if you have a bad heart, you might not leave so many descendants. IOW, it is wrong to ignore non-coding DNA when considering "selective" events. IDists have been saying this now for decades. Neo-Darwinists, OTOH, limiting themselves to only 'coding' DNA, have thrown science off the proper track of discovering where 'disease' lies. Apparently, it's not with the "genes," but with the 'enhancers.' From the end of the study's "Discussion":

Overall, this study highlights the important role enhancers play in cardiac health and provides a valuable compendium of human heart enhancers that can be easily integrated into cardiovascular disease studies.

Just think: in humans we have 20,000 'genes,' and, for just the 'heart', we have 80,000 possible 'enhancers.' Don't these two numbers tell us a lot? PaV

Goodusername, How can anyone know that these regions are heart enhancers, prior to doing the experiment that shows that these regions are heart enhancers? Or is there another method — besides knocking out the heart enhancers in the genome and look at heart function — to establish that these genetic regions are heart enhancers? If so, reference please. Origenes

Origenes, Leave out the "despite the fact" and your statement makes perfect sense. They wanted to know what would happen if they disabled heart enhancers, so they disabled the parts of the genome that are heart enhancers. What part of that is odd? goodusername

Goodusername: These regions were already KNOWN to be enhancers, i.e they weren’t thought to be junk dna.

So these regions were already known to be (heart) enhancers, despite the fact that “prior to this work, no study had looked at what happens to heart function as a result of knocking out the heart enhancers in the genome”? I find that odd. Origenes

Origenes, These regions were already KNOWN to be enhancers, i.e they weren't thought to be junk dna. The person who wrote the article apparently believed that despite being known enhancers that they were still believed to be junk DNA "because they do not code for specific proteins." goodusername

Goodusername, “Prior to this work, no study had looked at what happens to heart function as a result of knocking out the heart enhancers in the genome”, indicate that these heart enhancers were (wrongly) assumed to be part of "junk-DNA". Origenes

Easy there Origenes. wd400 is a neutralist like Moran. Their love for junk DNA runs deep. You might as well talk bad about his mother rather than talk bad about junk DNA. bornagain77

Surely, those thousands of mapped enhancers were not considered junk-DNA.

I'm glad you realize that, but I'm not sure that the person who wrote the article does. goodusername

wd400,

Enhancers were discovered in the 1970s, and we have mapped thousands of enhancers in the human genome. Do you really think anyone that thinks most of the genome is junk included enhancers is that tally?

That's the wrong question. Surely, those thousands of mapped enhancers were not considered junk-DNA. The question is: how about the enhancers which were not mapped? Today, with respect to the heart alone "80,000 candidate heart enhancers in the human genome" have been identified.

"Prior to this work, no study had looked at what happens to heart function as a result of knocking out the heart enhancers in the genome," said Dickel. "What was surprising to me was that outwardly, the knockout mice seemed fine. If you just looked at them, you wouldn't necessarily see anything wrong." Echocardiograms used to image the hearts from the two groups of mice confirmed that the heart tissue of mice with a disabled enhancer was pumping with less power than normal, consistent with the signs of human cardiomyopathy. [Sciencedaily.com]

Origenes

It's kind amazing how predictably terrible press releases that use the "once considered junk..." meme are. Enhancers were discovered in the 1970s, and we have mapped thousands of enhancers in the human genome. Do you really think anyone that thinks most of the genome is junk included enhancers is that tally? wd400