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Thursday, April 30, 2015

Nature reviews Nessa Carey's book on junk DNA

Read it at" Genetics: We are the 98%. Here's the important bit ...
Finally, Junk DNA, like the genome, is crammed with repetitious elements and superfluous text. Bite-sized chapters parade gee-whizz moments of genomics. Carey's The Epigenetics Revolution (Columbia University Press, 2012) offered lucid science writing and vivid imagery. Here the metaphors have been deregulated: they metastasize through an otherwise knowledgeable survey of non-coding DNA. At one point, the reader must run a gauntlet of baseball bats, iron discs, Velcro and “pretty fabric flowers” to understand “what happens when women make eggs”. The genome seems to provoke overheated prose, unbridled speculation and Panglossian optimism. Junk DNA produces a lot of DNA junk.

The idea that the many functions of non-coding DNA make the concept of junk DNA obsolete oversells a body of research that is exciting enough. ENCODE's claim of 80% functionality strikes many in the genome community as better marketing than science.


3 comments :

Jmac said...

It's paywalled for some. I think "Nature" is pulling away from junk DNA BS. The way I see it Larry is going to have a fit lol

Uncivilized Elk said...

I don't think you read the quote Larry provided...

Diogenes said...

Pest, you seem unable to understand English. Read the passage above. Nature appears to be backpedaling from the "Death of Junk DNA" fraud.

Nature will try to soften the blow with phrases like the Death of Junk DNA was "better marketing than science", as we saw above. Uh huh. Right. That sounds better than "calculated fraud."

You lost this round. War's not over, but you lost this one.

But tell us, Pest: how do you know, scientifically, under the Intelligent Design hypothesis, that there is no Junk DNA? How do you know that the Great Omnipotent Designer didn't design us humans as carriers, vectors, for lots of broken transposons? How do you IDers know the purposes and intents of the Great Omnipotent Designer with such precision and certainty?

I'm guessing the only possible answer, the honest answer, to that will be: Bible, Bible, Bible. Not so scientific. But if you're honest, you'll admit that's how you know, and the "Death of Junk DNA" never logically followed from the Intelligent Design hypothesis. It was always Bible anf Bible.