A friend asks, on reading this:
Far from being junk DNA, the pervasive retrotransposons that populate the genome have a powerful capacity to influence genes and chromatin. A new study demonstrates how the transcription of one such element, HERV-H, can modify the higher-order 3D structure of chromatin during early primate development.
– Michael I. Robson & Stefan Mundlos, “Jumping retroviruses nudge TADs apart” at Nature Genetics, volume 51, pages1304–1305 (2019)
Graur has been so convinced of junk DNA that he — last we heard — stopped even doing politeness on the subject any more.
Hmmm. Does someone have Miss Manners’ private e-mail or some other discreet means to get in touch with her, perhaps through a friend? Possibly Dr. Graur might wish to consider luncheon at some point. She is his guest, of course… 😉
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See also: Humans may have only 19,000 coding genes
“Junk DNA” regulates regeneration of tissues and organs
Note: One junk DNA defender just isn’t doing politeness anymore. Hmmm. In a less Darwinian science workplace, that could become more a problem for him than for his colleagues.
Junk DNA can actually change genitalia. Junk DNA played the same role in defending Darwinian evolution as claims that Neanderthal man was a subhuman. did: The vast library of junk genes and the missing link made Darwin’s story understandable to the average person and the missing link even became part of popular culture. With Darwinism so entrenched, the fact that these beliefs are not based on fact will be difficult to root out of the culture. Darwin-only school systems are part of the problem.
Been a while since we’ve heard much about humans as the 98% or 99% chimpanzee. If the human genome is this fuzzy how would we know? And doubtless, things have gotten more complex.
At Quanta: Cells need almost all of their genes, even the “junk DNA”
“Junk” RNA helps regulate metabolism
Junk DNA defender just isn’t doing politeness any more.
Anyone remember ENCODE? Not much junk DNA? Still not much. (Paper is open access.)
Yes, Darwin’s followers did use junk DNA as an argument for their position.
Another response to Darwin’s followers’ attack on the “not-much-junk-DNA” ENCODE findings
Dan Graur may have enough reasons to be annoyed:
A conserved function for pericentromeric satellite DNA
Linker histones are fine-scale chromatin architects modulating developmental decisions in Arabidopsis
Evolutionary dynamics of abundant 7 bp satellites in the genome of Drosophila virilis PDF
Centromere Repeats: Hidden Gems of the Genome
New Aspects of Magnesium Function: A Key Regulator in Nucleosome Self-Assembly, Chromatin Folding and Phase Separation
The modular mechanism of chromocenter formation in Drosophila
Ribosomal DNA and the rDNA-binding protein Indra mediate non-random sister chromatid segregation in Drosophila male germline stem cells PDF
Dan Graur may have enough reasons to be annoyed, considering that the news coming from biology research don’t seem encouraging to him and his associates. The functional complexity of the complex functionality observed in the biological systems is mind boggling. Here’s just a small sample:
Tissue-specific CTCF–cohesin-mediated chromatin architecture delimits enhancer interactions and function in vivo
A revised model for promoter competition based on multi-way chromatin interactions PDF
In the loop: promoter–enhancer interactions and bioinformatics
Computational Biology Solutions to Identify Enhancers-target Gene Pairs
Recursive Motif Analyses Identify Brain Epigenetic Transcription Regulatory Modules
Revealing Gene Function and Transcription Relationship by Reconstructing Gene-Level Chromatin Interaction
Non-coding RNAs and chromatin domains
The Eleanor ncRNAs activate the topological domain of the ESR1 locus to balance against apoptosis
Junk DNA doesn’t make any sense given the spooling histone octamers. Did nature just produce a way to organize the junk so it isn’t in the way? The organized spooling just happened? Really?
ET,
Well, it didn’t just happened -that’s a straw man that ID people made up- but it actually resulted from many years of random variation and natural selection acting on older molecules. It’s well documented in a vast literature accessible to all who want to read it. You may want to look at it too.
PavelU:
That is the propaganda, anyway.