Rick Sternberg explains:
… what may be “junk” at one level may be of the utmost significance at another level. This happens I think by way of a top-down causal process that Paul Davies (2012) has alluded to, explainable in part by the augmentation of
“the normal terms referring to local forces contained in the Hamiltonian for chromatin with additional (presumably small) non-local terms representing functional (i.e. semantic or contextual) information. By coupling the mechanical and informational dynamics in this manner, the dynamical laws describing chromatin behaviour would become time-dependent and change according to the informational state of the system. Information would then possess direct, albeit subtle, traction over matter and permit epigenetic control to be exercised directly on the chromatin itself.”
Such would involve an “explicit coupling between dynamical laws and information-rich states, thus endowing higher level entities, such as contextual information, with direct causal efficacy on matter alongside intermolecular forces.”
If we take such “contextual information” to be resident at all tiers of the meiosis I network, from the spindle as whole to (say) each and every centromeric locus, then “with direct causal efficacy” retroelement and satellite DNAs can be endowed with information-bearing states. Of course, “such a proposal represents a decisive break with the normal formulation of the theory of dynamical systems,” as Davies notes, which means that “theories of this sort remain largely unexplored.” But explore it we should…and especially where cytology meets “junk” DNA.
Richard Sternberg, “DNA May Be “Junk” at One Level But of Utmost Significance at Another” at Evolution News and Science Today
If there were a prize for the Darwinian idea that has proven least helpful to Darwinism, would junk DNA be the winner?