Re: [math-fun] non-junk DNA: junk science?

The whole biochemistry of life is the most complex Rube Goldberg system in the known universe. Anything that doesn't break the machine completely is just carried along in the next generation of the design, and every eon or so a closet full of "junk" gets opened and a new use is found for the stuff. One of the main mechanism in evolution is accidentally duplicating a bunch of stuff, which creates spare copies that are not really need. These spares are free to become nonfunctional, and then to acquire new functions, given geologic time.