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Saturday, July 29, 2023

How could a graduate student at King's College in London not know the difference between junk DNA and non-coding DNA?

There's something called "the EDIT lab blog" written by people at King's College In London (UK). Here's a recent post (May 19, 2023) that was apparently written by a Ph.D. student: J for Junk DNA Does Not Exist!.

It begins with the standard false history,

The discovery of the structure of DNA by James Watson and Francis Crick in 1953 was a milestone in the field of biology, marking a turning point in the history of genetics (Watson & Crick, 1953). Subsequent advances in molecular biology revealed that out of the 3 billion base pairs of human DNA, only around 2% codes for proteins; many scientists argued that the other 98% seemed like pointless bloat of genetic material and genomic dead-ends referred to as non-coding DNA, or junk DNA – a term you’ve probably come across (Ohno, 1972).

You all know what's coming next. The discovery of function in non-coding DNA overthrew the concept of junk DNA and ENCODE played a big role in this revolution. The post ends with,

Nowadays, researchers are less likely to describe any non-coding sequences as junk because there are multiple other and more accurate ways of labelling them. The discussion over non-coding DNA’s function is not over, and it will be long before we understand our whole genome. For many researchers, the field’s best way ahead is keeping an open mind when evaluating the functional consequences of non-coding DNA and RNA, and not to make assumptions about their biological importance.

As Sandwalk readers know, there was never a time when knowledgeable scientists said that all non-coding DNA was junk. They always knew that there was functional DNA outside of coding regions. Real open-minded scientists are able to distinguish between junk DNA and non-coding DNA and they are able to evaluate the evidence for junk DNA without dismissing it based on a misunderstanding of the history of the subject.

The question is why would a Ph.D. student who makes the effort to write a blog post on junk DNA not take the time to read up on the subject and learn the proper definition of junk and the actual evidence? Why would their supervisors and other members of the lab not know that this post is wrong?

It's a puzzlement.


Saturday, July 08, 2023

The evolution of genomic complexity explained by Zach Hancock

Zach Hancock has posted another YouTube video. This one is about the evolution of genomic complexity. Have you ever wondered why eukaryotic biochemistry is so much more complex than the same processes in bacteria? Maybe it's because bacteria have highy efficient biochemistry and eukaryotes have evolved bigger, more complex structures by accident. This is a video about evolution by accident and the evolution of complexity in the absense of positive Darwinian selection.

You can learn about constructive neutral evolution and the origin of introns and the spliceosome. You can learn why eukaryotic ribosomes are so much bigger and more complex than bacterial ribosomes. As a bonus, you can learn how structures showing irreducible complexity arose quite naturally in the absence of any supernatural intervention.


Thursday, July 06, 2023

James Shapiro doesn't like junk DNA

Shapiro doubles down on his claim that junk DNA doesn't exist.

It's been a while since we've heard from James Shaprio. You might recall that James A. Shapiro is a biochemistry/microbiology professor at the University of Chicago and the author of a book promoting natural genetic engineering. I reviewed his book and didn't like it very much—Shapiro didn't like my review [James Shapiro Never Learns] [James Shapiro Responds to My Review of His Book].