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Biophysics: Long DNA terminal repeats have wrapping function, researcher finds

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Ortiz found that kinking was largely due to local “melting”, where the sequences temporarily separate from their complementary pairs and slide to make contacts at different locations on the chain.

Physicist Rob Sheldon comments,

This could be another footnote in Jonathan Wells’ The Myth of Junk DNA, because what this article suggests is that certain long sequences of DNA codons have an altered mechanical property. Thus long terminal repeats do more than act as “spacing” for the histones, but actually can be “wrapped” more tightly. All that stuttering, and we thought it was uncontrollable noise.

ID theorists predict that there is only a small amount of mere noise in the genome, not a large amount. That’s consistent with the usual pattern of systems designed by an intelligent agent.

Put another way: No one buys a radio or TV to enjoy the static.

Comments
Do you mean "Long DNA terminal repeats" as in retroviral/retrotransposon elements used by LTR integrases to get into the genome? Those weren't the subject of the paper. The words LTR and "terminal repeat" don't appear in the paper. Repeats do-but a quick look suggests they mean something different-tracts of the same base (AAAAAA), i.e. basepair repeats instead of LTR style repeats. Perhaps you could elaborate on how you drew this conclusion? TheDrREC
July 13, 2011
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