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Saturday, May 20, 2023

Chapter 10: Turning Genes On and Off

Francis Collins, and many others, believe that the concept of junk DNA is outmoded because recent discoveries have shown that most of the human genome is devoted to regulation. This is part of a clash of worldviews where one side sees the genome as analogous to a finely tuned Swiss watch with no room for junk and the other sees the genome as a sloppy entity that's just good enough to survive.

The ENCODE researchers and their allies claim that the human genome contains more than 600,000 regulatory sites and that means an average of 24 per gene covering about 10,000 bp per gene. I explain why these numbers are unreasonable and why most of the sites they identify have nothing to do with biologically significant regulation.

This chapter also covers the epigenetics hype and restriction/modification.

Click on this link to see more.
Chapter 10: Turning Genes On and Off


12 comments :

Tony Canning said...

Any news on publication date (UK) Professor? I have it order, looking forward to it. Thanks
Tony Canning

Anonymous said...

One mild complaint about this chapter: I could have wished for some information/examples regarding how few generations even those epigenetic changes that can be passed on endure, and therefore how they're gone in an eyeblink as far as the opportunity for any evolutionary impact is concerned.

Anonymous said...

Minus the publishing aspects, how long did it take you to complete your book, from research to sitting down and writing?
-César

judmarc said...

Sigh - I managed to leave an anonymous comment again. Mine's the "mild complaint" above.

John Harshman said...

Larry, just so you know: the book has arrived. Talking about a real, physical copy. So far I've only read the introduction and a page on numts. Back when I was sequencing cytochrome b those were really annoying. There was one species I cloned (well, somebody else actually cloned it for me) and I got a whole bunch of sequences, none of them apparently real mitochondrial sequence, most of them with out-of-frame indels and/or premature stop codons. Probably a whole series of tandem duplications of cyt b and who knows what else.

gert korthof said...

Larry, in the KOBO ebook version of your book, a fragment of a sentence has been transposed from one paragraph to the next:
"were junk, and it's clearly not what you would expect if most of their genomes were conserved by negative selection."
Is this only in the ebook version or in the print version too?

nice illustration of a transposon!

Hemidactylus said...

@gert korthof
Larry is already aware. It is due to the placement of an informative box about the molecular clock between the two sections. It’s obvious in the print edition, but due to how it is rendered in digital versions not obvious in your KOBO reader. I noticed the same thing.

See comments here: https://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2023/05/90-of-your-genome-is-junk.html

Larry said: “Yes, the molecular clock bit is a separate box that's clearly marked in the print edition (shaded, different font).”

Mikkel Rumraket Rasmussen said...

I ordered the book from the german Amazon website thinking it would ship faster(to Denmark) than if I ordered from a US or Canadian wite. Apparently a mistake as it's been delayed now as of writing this post. Greatly annoyed.

Tony Canning said...

Still no word from Amazon UK as to when available.

Barbara said...

I got your book and have read it. I didn't expect to chuckle over such a technical book -- enjoyed that. I've recommended it to others and plan to give a copy as a Christmas gift (though not sure how well it will be received).

Joe Felsenstein said...

Got back today from 3 weeks away, and your book was waiting for me (a complimentary copy Larry sent). We had been told by someone who checked for us 10 days ago that it arrived, which it did. Looks great.

Graham Jones said...

My copy has just arrived in the UK.