Can someone please tell them, the Titanic has sunk — its seaworthiness is no longer an issue?:
With the discovery of the double helical structure of DNA, a shift occurred in how biologists investigated questions surrounding cellular processes, such as protein synthesis. Instead of viewing biological activity through the lens of chemical reactions, this new field used biological information to gain a new profound view of how biological systems work. Molecular biologists asked new types of questions that would have been inconceivable to the older generation of researchers, such as how cellular machineries convert inherited biological information into functional molecules like proteins. This new focus on biological information also gave molecular biologists a way to link their findings to concepts developed by genetics and the modern synthesis. However, by the late 1960s this all changed. Elevated rates of mutation, unsustainable genetic loads, and high levels of variation in populations, challenged Darwinian evolution, a central tenant of the modern synthesis, where adaptation was the main driver of evolutionary change. Building on these findings, Motoo Kimura advanced the neutral theory of molecular evolution, which advocates that selection in multicellular eukaryotes is weak and that most genomic changes are neutral and due to random drift. This was further elaborated by Jack King and Thomas Jukes, in their paper “Non-Darwinian Evolution”, where they pointed out that the observed changes seen in proteins and the types of polymorphisms observed in populations only become understandable when we take into account biochemistry and Kimura’s new theory. Fifty years later, most molecular biologists remain unaware of these fundamental advances. Their adaptionist viewpoint fails to explain data collected from new powerful technologies which can detect exceedingly rare biochemical events. For example, high throughput sequencing routinely detects RNA transcripts being produced from almost the entire genome yet are present less than one copy per thousand cells and appear to lack any function. Molecular biologists must now reincorporate ideas from classical biochemistry and absorb modern concepts from molecular evolution, to craft a new lens through which they can evaluate the functionality of transcriptional units, and make sense of our messy, intricate, and complicated genome.
Alexander F. Palazzo* and Nevraj S. Kejiou, Non-Darwinian Molecular Biology, Front. Genet., 16 February 2022 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fgene.2022.831068
The paper is open access.
Tim Standish writes to say,
I’m intrigued by people who want to argue stuff like this, as if what they personally believe must be reflected in reality rather than the other way around. The argument that I make is that the assumption of meaning, function and purpose has proven to be productive, while the assumption that everything is most likely meaningless, functionless and lacks purpose is a science killing, depressing and often demonstrably wrong exhibition of prejudice. Does that mean that function for everything has been proven? Of course not, but logic that goes, “I don’t know what this does, therefore it does nothing,” is arrogance, not knowledge. Anyone who embraces it should be embarrassed.
You may also wish to read:
New use for “junk DNA”: Controlling fear Okay, why, until recently, did researchers think that “the majority of our genes were made up of junk DNA, which essentially didn’t do anything”? Because that vast sunken library of dead information (sheer randomness and waste) was a slam dunk for Darwinism, as politically powerful theistic evolutionist Francis Collins was quick to point out in The Language of God. (2007). If that’s not true, an argument for Darwinism is disconfirmed.
and
Ah, a real-world term for former “junk DNA.” And the winner is “genomic dark matter”: “Most DNA in the human genome still has unknown functions and is referred to as “genomic dark matter.”