With respect to “A “junk DNA” jumping gene is critical for embryo cell development, philosopher of biology Paul Nelson writes to say, In personal correspondence over the past couple of years with a tenured geneticist at a major university who is a “junk DNA” proponent, I’ve pointed out that “x has no function” propositions in biology have just about the worst track record one can imagine. Namely, the propositions lead nowhere (empirically), and sit in a forlorn dim corner with other such propositions, waiting to be overturned by research. One doesn’t need to be an ID proponent to see that natural scientific curiosity will have investigators poking at apparent junk, wondering what it might be doing. As expressed beautifully in Read More ›

This was discovered by someone who was skeptical of the idea that our geomes are largely useless junk. From Nicholas Weiler at Phys.Org: A so-called “jumping gene” that researchers long considered either genetic junk or a pernicious parasite is actually a critical regulator of the first stages of embryonic development, according to a new study in mice led by UC San Francisco scientists and published June 21, 2018 in Cell. Only about 1 percent of the human genome encodes proteins, and researchers have long debated what the other 99 percent is good for. Many of these non–protein coding regions are known to contain important regulatory elements that orchestrate gene activity, but others are thought to be evolutionary garbage that is Read More ›

From David Klinghoffer at ENST, on Darwinism and the recent find that junk DNA can alter genitalia: The “junk” view, once a prized piece of evidence for neo-Darwinian theory, is thus reduced to the province of the benighted, the reactionaries who “still refer to [it] as ‘junk’ DNA,” after science has already passed them by. Having volumes of garbage lying around was a logical prediction of Darwinism that is in the process of being falsified. Now, it seems likely that non-coding regions have not trivial but “drastic effects.” This reversal helps explain why evolutionists like Richard Dawkins have radically revised a key claim. Dawkins himself, in the space of three years, went from assuring us that junk validates Darwinism to claiming Read More ›

From at ScienceDaily: Mammals will develop ovaries and become females unless the early sex organs have enough of a protein called SOX9 at a key stage in their development. SOX9 causes these organs to become testes, which then direct the rest of the embryo to become male. The amount of SOX9 produced is controlled initially by the SRY protein encoded by the Sry gene, which is located on the Y chromosome. This is why males, who have an X chromosome and a Y chromosome, usually develop testes while females, who have two X chromosomes, do not. Only 2% of human DNA contains the ‘code’ to produce proteins, key building blocks of life. The remaining 98% is ‘non-coding’ and was once Read More ›

From Veronique Greenwood at Quanta: By knocking out genes three at a time, scientists have painstakingly deduced the web of genetic interactions that keeps a cell alive. Researchers long ago identified essential genes that yeast cells can’t live without, but new work, which appears today in Science, shows that looking only at those gives a skewed picture of what makes cells tick: Many genes that are inessential on their own become crucial as others disappear. The result implies that the true minimum number of genes that yeast — and perhaps, by extension, other complex organisms — need to survive and thrive may be surprisingly large. … “Perhaps what we’re sampling here,” Andrews said, “are some functional connections in the cell Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Their findings, published recently in the journal eLife, indicate that this genetic “junk” performs the vital function of ensuring that chromosomes bundle correctly inside the cell’s nucleus, which is necessary for cell survival. And this function appears to be conserved across many species. This pericentromeric satellite DNA consists of a very simple, highly repetitive sequence of genetic code. Although it accounts for a substantial portion of our genome, satellite DNA does not contain instructions for making any specific proteins. What’s more, its repetitive nature is thought to make the genome less stable and more susceptible to damage or disease. Until fairly recently, scientists believed this so-called “junk” or “selfish” DNA did not serve any real purpose. “But we Read More ›

From Sal Cordova at Creation-Evolution Headlines: Chris Rupe co-authored the book Contested Bones with John Sanford to tell about the inadequate evidence for human evolution. The book is almost entirely about bones and the fossil record, but there are 3 pages in that book that refute claims by evolutionary biologists that the human genome is badly designed because of repetitive DNA elements known as Alus. Some 10-11% of the human genome is composed of repeats of specific 300-base pattern called an Alu. Evolutionists claim this is bad design. Their reasoning goes something like this: ‘You only need one copy of a phone book in a house, maybe a few at most, certainly not millions of copies. Therefore the 1 million Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Duplications of large segments of noncoding [junk] DNA in the human genome may have contributed to the emergence of differences between humans and nonhuman primates, according to results presented at the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) 2017 Annual Meeting in Orlando, Fla. Identifying these duplications, which include regulatory sequences, and their effect on traits and behavior may help scientists explain genetic contributions to human disease. Paulina Carmona-Mora, PhD, who presented the work; Megan Dennis, PhD; and their colleagues at the University of California, Davis, study the history of human-specific duplications (HSDs), segments of DNA longer than 1,000 base pairs that are repeated in humans but not in primates or other animals. In this study, they focused on Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Gene therapy using ‘junk DNA’ could lower risk for heart disease Scientists from UCLA and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute successfully used a gene that suppresses cholesterol levels as part of a treatment to reduce plaque in mice with a disorder called familial hypercholesterolemia. In a preclinical study, researchers found that the gene, LeXis, lowered cholesterol and blockages in the arteries, and the treatment appeared to reduce the build-up of fat in liver cells. Familial hypercholesterolemia is an inherited condition characterized by extremely high levels of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (commonly referred to as “bad cholesterol”) and an increased risk of early heart disease. The LeXis gene belongs to a unique group of genes that until recently were considered Read More ›

Our physics color commentator Rob Sheldon offers some thoughts on junk DNA, the claim that most of the human genome does nothing (often an argument for explicitly Darwinian evolution): a) Chance is the truly unfalsifiable hypothesis, because all it gives you is a number. 1:10, 1:10^500 are all the same as far as the Darwinist is concerned. Even Dembski’s “1:10^150” possibility bound is not a limit to them. So everything I say about designers has to be seen against that light. Of course, in the Darwinist’s defense, they don’t really get probability and logarithms. b) A designer is recognized by a pattern. Writing experts can isolate a piece of scribal work to within 50 years by looking at the style. Read More ›

Graur’s latest claim that 75% of the human genome is non-functional has attracted a lot of digital ink. Pop science loves that sort of thing. From Kerry Grens at the Scientist: Up to 25 percent of the human genome is critical, while the rest has no function, according to a study published July 11 in Genome Biology and Evolution. The estimate, generated by looking at fertility rates and the expected frequency of deleterious mutations, contradicts a 2012 claim from a large international group called ENCODE, which estimated that 80 percent of the genome is functional. “For 80% of the human genome to be functional, each couple in the world would have to beget on average 15 children and all but Read More ›

From Wesley J. Smith at First Things: Science is never truly settled. Indeed, challenging seemingly incontrovertible facts and continually retesting long-accepted theories are crucial components of the scientific method. Examples of perceived truths overturned by subsequent discoveries are ubiquitous. Here’s just one: So-called junk DNA that does not encode proteins was, until relatively recently, thought by a large majority of scientists to have no purpose, and was even used as evidence of random and purposeless evolution. But continuing investigations in the field led to the discovery that most “junk DNA” actually serves important biological functions. Think what might have happened if scientists seeking to continue exploring this area of inquiry had been warned away because of the “scientific consensus.” What Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Researchers at the University of Oslo (UiO) keep discovering surprises in the Atlantic cod genome. The most recent study has revealed an unusual amount of short and identical DNA sequences, which might give cod an evolutionary advantage. Or else it is something the cod could live with or else it makes no difference at present. If we don’t have any very definite information, why talk about “evolutionary advantage” at all? Interesting: “We have already found a fish species that has even more tandem repeats than cod, namely the related haddock. Both cod (Latin name: Gadus morhua) and haddock (Melanogrammus aeglefinus) are members of the cod family (Gadidae). This may indicate that the whole group has an increased proportion Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: They have determined that several thousands of the retroviruses that have established themselves in our genome may serve as “docking platforms” for a protein called TRIM28. This protein has the ability to “switch off” not only viruses but also the standard genes adjacent to them in the DNA helix, allowing the presence of ERV to affect gene expression. This switching-off mechanism may behave differently in different people, since retroviruses are a type of genetic material that may end up in different places in the genome. This makes it a possible tool for evolution, and even a possible underlying cause of neurological diseases. In fact, there are studies that indicate a deviating regulation of ERV in several neurological diseases Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: The stretches of DNA between genes, littered with repeating sequences, were once considered the “junk of the genome,” but scientists are learning that some of this junk is far from harmless clutter. Researchers at the University of North Carolina Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center report in the journal Cell Reports that certain short, repetitive sequences of DNA, or “junk,” play an important role in the development of Ewing sarcoma, a rare bone and soft tissue cancer that occurs most commonly in children and adolescents. “Some people may still think of these non-coding sequences as junk; that they don’t really do anything but act as hangers-on to the more famous parts of the genome,” said the study’s senior author Ian Read More ›