Clone someone using a starting cell with all the "junk" removed and I doubt the conclusion will be that it has no function ;) On 7 Sep 2012, at 15:59, Henry Baker wrote:
Well, I believe that he's wrong, but I probably won't live long enough to see him debunked.
Of course, some of this controversy depends upon the definition of "junk".
If you consider all the extra bits in random codes to be "junk", then so be it. They are there to increase the coding distance, but don't add any information, per se.
There is a _huge_ reservoir of resilience built into living beings; there has to be, given that those organisms that didn't have this resilience didn't survive to the present.
As I mentioned before in my Microsoft Windows analogy, you can't possibly understand why 90% of the code in Windows is there until you see the test suite for Windows, which rigorously checks that every "corner case" is properly handled -- even "corner cases" that many/most of us would now consider to be "bugs". This is due to the requirement for "backwards compatibility".
And of course, DNA is by definition "backwards looking", in that it "remembers" insults/challenges from the past that may or may not ever re-occur. If these insults/challenges never re-occur, then is any DNA that is required to meet these challenges considered to be "junk DNA" ? If so, then a significant fraction of the items in your computer's cache memory are also "junk", since these cache lines will be evicted before ever being used again.
At 07:03 AM 9/7/2012, Jeffrey Shallit wrote:
Indeed, you have missed almost everything. It is Larry Moran's position that 90% of DNA has no function.
You can start with
http://sandwalk.blogspot.ca/2011/10/myth-of-junk-dna-by-jonathan-wells.html
which is easily findable with a google search.
On 9/7/12 6:52 AM, Henry Baker wrote:
I must have missed something (a lot of somethings?) on this blog. I couldn't find much detail on it at all.
All he seems to say is that at least 80% of the DNA is functional, and probably 100%. I agree with this assessment.
Is there more detail somewhere else?
Perhaps you have a better link?
At 03:13 AM 9/7/2012, Jeffrey Shallit wrote:
There have been a lot of claims about junk DNA in this thread that are simply wrong.
Rather than enumerate them, I'll just direct you to the blog of Toronto biologist Larry Moran, who has a number of posts about junk DNA, as well as a number of posts illustrating why the latest news has been oversold.
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