Casey Luskin posts misleading quotes about junk DNA

On Thursday May 2, 2024, Casey Luskin and Dan Stern Cardinale debated junk DNA on the YouTube channel "The NonSequitor Show." David Klinghoffer thinks that this debate went very well for the ID side [Debate: Casey Luskin Versus Rutgers Biologist Dan Cardinale, Thursday, May 2]. I agree with Klinghoffer; Luskin did an excellent job of promoting his case because many of his statements and claims were not challenged effectively.

I'll be putting up a separate post on the debate but for now I'd like to address an article by Casey Luskin that he posted before the debate as preparation for what he was going to say. The article consists of a bunch of quotes from prominent scientists about junk DNA [“Junk DNA” from Three Perspectives: Some Key Quotes]. Here are the three perspectives, according to Luskin.

Category 1: Quotes from evolutionists claiming (or repeating the widespread belief) that non-coding DNA is “junk” and has no function.

Some of the quotes represent the actual position of junk DNA proponents but Luskin has also picked out stupid quotes from scientists who think, incorrectly, that all non-coding DNA is junk. This is deliberate as we will see below.

Category 2: Early quotes from intelligent design theorists predicting function for non-coding “junk” DNA.

Luskin builds the case for function in non-coding DNA by quoting religious scientists who "predict" that there will be functional DNA in non-coding regions of the genome. This is disingenuous at best because Luskin knows full well that from the very beginning of the scientific debate we knew about functional non-coding DNA. It was never the case that all non-coding DNA was assumed to be junk.

Category 3: Quotes from mainstream scientific sources saying that we’ve experienced a shift in our thinking that junk DNA actually has function.

Many of these quotes are from scientists announcing that some non-coding DNA has a function. They support Luskin's false claim that all non-coding DNA was thought to be junk and the discovery of functional regions of non-coding DNA has resulted in a "paradigm shift" in our view of the human genome.

Casey Luskin should not have been allowed to get away with equating junk DNA and non-coding DNA in the debate. He should have been challenged to retract that false claim at the very beginning of the debate and called out whenever he used the term "non-coding DNA" during the debate.

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A University of Chicago history graduate student's perspective on junk DNA

A new master's thesis on the history of junk DNA has been posted. It's from the Department of History at the University of Chicago.

My routine scan for articles on junk DNA turned up the abstract of an M.A. thesis on the history of junk DNA: Requiem for a Gene: The Problem of Junk DNA for the Molecular Paradigm. The supervisor is Professor Emily Kern in the Department of History at the University of Chicago. I've written to her to ask for a copy of the thesis and for permission to ask her, and her student, some questions about the thesis. No reply so far.

Here's the abstract of the thesis.

“Junk DNA” has been at the center of several high-profile scientific controversies over the past four decades, most recently in the disputes over the ENCODE Project. Despite its prominence in these debates, the concept has yet to be properly historicized. In this thesis, I seek to redress this oversight, inaugurating the study of junk DNA as a historical object and establishing the need for an earlier genesis for the concept than scholars have previously recognized. In search of a new origin story for junk, I chronicle developments in the recognition and characterization of noncoding DNA sequences, positioning them within existing historiographical narratives. Ultimately, I trace the origin of junk to 1958, when a series of unexpected findings in bacteria revealed the existence of significant stretches of DNA that did not encode protein. I show that the discovery of noncoding DNA sequences undermined molecular biologists’ vision of a gene as a line of one-dimensional code and, in turn, provoked the first major crisis in their nascent field. It is from this crisis, I argue, that the concept of junk DNA emerged. Moreover, I challenge the received narrative of junk DNA as an uncritical reification of the burgeoning molecular paradigm. By separating the history of junk DNA from its mythology, I demonstrate that the conceptualization of junk DNA reveals not the strength of molecular biological authority but its fragility.

It looks like it might be a history of noncoding DNA but I won't know for certain until I see the entire thesis. It's only available to students and staff at the University of Chicago.

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What is the "dark matter of the genome"?

The phrase "dark matter of the genome" is used by scientists who are skeptical of junk DNA so they want to convey the impression that most of the genome consists of important DNA whose function is just waiting to be discovered. Not surprisingly, the term is often used by researchers who are looking for funding and investors to support their efforts to use the latest technology to discover this mysterious function that has eluded other scientists for over 50 years.

The term "dark matter" is often applied to the human genome but what does it mean? We get a clue from a BBC article published by David Cox last April: The mystery of the human genome's dark matter. He begins the article by saying,

Twenty years ago, an enormous scientific effort revealed that the human genome contains 20,000 protein-coding genes, but they account for just 2% of our DNA. The rest of was written off as junk – but we are now realising it has a crucial role to play.

Still Digging: Part I

Believe it or not, the IDiots are still trying to weasel out of the mistakes they've made in attacking junk DNA.

Here's the problem. Jonathan Wells wrote an entire book on The Myth of Junk DNA. Wells says that back in the early 1970s a substantial number of scientists—he calls them Darwinists—said that all noncoding DNA was junk.

Bryony Graham: another scientist who writes about the junk DNA controversy without doing her homework

I was searching for information about Craig Venter and his position on junk DNA when I stumbled upon this post by Bryony Graham: Why we still don’t have personalised medicine, 15 years after sequencing the human genome. She is a postdoc in Molecular Genetics at the University of Oxford so the subject is within her area of expertise.¹

The post is from Dec. 1, 2015—that's only one month ago so she should be aware of all the facts concerning junk DNA.

If you are going to write about a subject in your area of expertise then it's reasonable to make yourself informed, especially if you know that the subject is controversial. For some strange reason, this common sense approach seems to be ignored when discussing genomes, evolution, and junk DNA. I don't know why some researchers think they know enough about a subject when all they've done (apparently) is read a few popular press reports.

Let's look at what Bryony Graham (@byrony_g) writes to see whether she is behaving like a proper scientist should behave when writing for the general public. It's worth noting that she was on the shortlist for the 2011 Max Perutz Science Writing Award so somebody must think she's a good science writer.

Not all junk DNA is rubbish

Athena Andreadis Writes for Scientific American: Junk DNA, Junky PR

Quite a few science journalists have clued in to the fact that they were massively conned by the ENCODE publicity machine. Turns out that the death of junk DNA was greatly exaggerated.

Here's what Athena Andreadis has to say on the Scientific American website: Junk DNA, Junky PR. Athena is a professor in the Department of Cell and Developmental Biology at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

Shoddy But Not "Junk"?

Philip Ball is a freelance science writer based in London (UK). He frequently writes for Nature. His latest article is a review of a recently published paper by John Avise [What a shoddy piece of work is man]. Apparently Avise has just published a paper in PNAS where he points out that our genome does not look like it was designed. It's an attack on Intelligent Design Creationism and Adaptationism.

I can't find the paper but I have read Avise's book, Inside the Human Genome so I'm familiar with his thesis—and I agree with it.

The purpose of this posting is not to review the points that John Avise makes but to comment on one of the points made by Philip Ball. At the end of his Nature review he says,

However — although heaven forbid that this should seem to let ID off the hook — it is worth pointing out that some of the genomic inefficiencies Avise lists are still imperfectly understood. We should be cautious about writing them off as 'flaws', lest we make the same mistake evident in the labelling as 'junk DNA' genomic material that seems increasingly to play a biological role. There seems little prospect that the genome will ever emerge as a paragon of good engineering, but we shouldn't too quickly derogate that which we do not yet understand.

THEME

Genomes & Junk DNA

I just gave a talk on junk DNA where I explained to my audience the nature of the scientific controversy. We know for a fact that our genome is littered with pseudogenes of all sorts and we know for a fact that more than 50% of our genome is repetitive DNA of one kind or another. A good hunk of that is degenerative transposons and fragements of transposons [Junk in your Genome: LINEs]. Another large hunk is Alu sequences: fragments of an ancient primate transposon derived from 7SL RNA [Transcription of the 7SL Gene].

We also know a great deal about introns and that knowledge leads to the conclusion that most intron sequences are dispensable. it's part of the junk in our genome. We know about the genetic load argument [Genetic Load, Neutral Theory, and Junk DNA] and we know about the C-Value Paradox. Most scientists who study the problem of junk DNA know about The Onion Test.

My point is that it's extremely misleading to suggest that our identification of junk DNA is based on a lack of understanding. That's simply not true. There are some very good scientific reasons for maintaining that most of our DNA is junk based on over 40 years of work on genome organization.

Yes, it's true that there have been some scientific challenges questioning the conclusion of those studies. There is a group of scientists who claim that vast amounts of our genome serve some mysterious purpose that's only vaguely defined. It could be regulation of some sort or even an entire new class of RNA-encoding genes that make us human.

These claims make the debate over junk DNA a scientific controversy but they certainly haven't succeeded in disproving the hypothesis. None of the recent claimants can explain pseudogenes and degenerative transposons, which make up more than half of our genome. None of the opponents can refute the genetic load argument.

Science writers like Philip Ball can be forgiven for not delving into the problem. It's easy to fall for the latest articles that purport to show function for a large part of what we call junk DNA. After all, those anti-junk proponents don't do their homework either and they gloss over all the data that contradicts their "new" hypothesis.

My point is that the idea of junk DNA is alive and well in spite of what modern science writers seem to think. It's just not true that today's scientists think we made a big mistake in the past by calling it junk DNA. This is still very much a scientific controversy and it's too soon to tell how it will pan out.

Personally, I think the evidence in favor of a large amount of junk in our genome is persuasive and I'd be very, very surprised if a significant amount of it turns out to be functional. I wish science writers would stop behaving as though the issue had been resolved and junk DNA is dead.

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Junk DNA debate: Casey Luskin vs Dan Stern Cardinale

Here's a link to the junk DNA debate between Dan Stern Cardinale and Casey Luskin. The debate took place on May 2, 2024.

I mentioned in a previous post that Luskin should have been called out on his repeated attempts to equate junk DNA with non-coding DNA. This allowed him to portray all non-coding functions as evidence against junk DNA. [Casey Luskin posts misleading quotes about junk DNA].

There are several other things that I would have done differently. I would have made it clear that 10% of the genome is functional and we don't know the function of some of that fraction. Thus, all newly discovered functional regions could still fit into the 10% and 90% of the genome is still junk. Every time Casey mentions a new function he should have been challenged to specify exactly what percentage of the genome he is referring to. (Dan tried to do this but he was too nice, and let Casey off the hook.)

The idea here is to make it clear to viewers that recent discoveries of functional regions do not affect the idea that most of our genome is junk.

I would also attempt to get Casey to admit that there's a scientific controversy over junk DNA so there are many papers defending junk DNA and criticizing the arguments of junk DNA opponents. For every quotation from a scientist who opposes junk, there's an equally significant quotation from one who supports junk. Why does Casey only quote scientists who agree with him? Is this cherry-picking? Is selectively rattling off quotations and references from people who agree with you a reasonable way to have a serious scientific debate?

I think the arguments over transcripts should begin with presenting all the scientific evidence that spurious transcripts exist - for example, random DNA sequences inserted into a cell nucleus are transcribed and spurious transcription is easily documented in well-studied organisms such as bacteria and yeast. The characteristics of spurious transcription are that the transcripts are present in very small amounts, that they are rapidly degraded, that they come from regions of the genome that are not under purifying selection, and they are cell/tissue specific. So what is the most reasonable explanation when you look at such transcripts?

Casey Luskin's attempt to avoid the best explanation (spurius transcription) is a classic example ad hoc rescue and it might have been useful to point this out to viewers.

Regulation is not new. There was serious discussion and debate over the amount of the genome devoted to regulation back in the late 1960s when the concept of junk DNA was first proposed. Casey should have been challenged to state what percentage of the genome is devoted to regulation and if he comes up with an unreasonable number he should have to give examples of many well-studied genes that have been shown to have that level of regulation. (Hint: There aren't any.) All of the detailed work on the regulation of dozens of specific human genes has shown that you don't need more than a few transcription factor binding sites to control expression. Is there any reason to suppose that the other genes require ten or a hundred times more regulatory sequences to control expression?

What is the trend line? Ever since the ENCODE publicity disaster of 2012 there has been a flood of papers defending junk DNA and the data supporting junk DNA is now stronger that it has ever been because we now know from hundreds of thousands of human genome sequences that only about 10% is under purifying selection. There have also been a lot of papers fleshing out the 10% of the genome that's functional. There have only been a handful of papers published in the past ten years that seriously attempt to present evidence that most of our genome is functional. I would have challenged Casey to come up with a single scientific publication in the past ten years claiming, with supporting data, that most of the genome is functional.

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John Mattick vs. Jonathan Wells

John Mattick and Jonathan Wells both believe that most of the DNA in our genome is functional. They do not believe that most of it is junk.

John Mattick and Jonathan Wells use the same arguments in defense of their position and they quote one another. Both of them misrepresent the history of the junk DNA debate and both of them use an incorrect version of the Central Dogma of Molecular Biology to make a case for the stupidity of scientists. Neither of them understand the basic biochemistry of DNA binding proteins leading them to misinterpret low level transcription as functional. Jonathan Wells and John Mattick ignore much of the scientific evidence in favor of junk DNA. They don't understand the significance of the so-called "C-Value Paradox" and they don't understand genetic load. Both of them claim that junk DNA is based on ignorance.

Casey Luskin's latest take on junk DNA—is he lying or is he stupid?

Some of us have been trying to educate the IDiots for over twenty years. It can be very, very, frustrating.

The issue of junk DNA is a case in point. We've been trying to explain the facts to people like Casey Luskin. I know he's listening because he comments on Sandwalk from time to time. Surely it can't be that hard? All they have to do is acknowledge that "Darwinians" are opposed to junk DNA because they think that natural selection is very powerful and would have selected against junk DNA. All we're asking is that they refer to "evolutionary biologists" when they talk about junk DNA proponents.

We've also pointed out, ad nauseam, that no knowledgeable scientist ever said that all noncoding DNA was junk. We just want the IDiots to admit that there were some smart scientists who knew about functional noncoding DNA—like the genes for ribosomal RNAs, origins of replication, and centromeres.

A Dishonest Intelligent Design Proponent?

Most IDiots are ignorant about evolution and they let their religious biases interfere with the proper interpretation of scientific data. We excuse their mistakes on the grounds that they don't know any better.

However, some IDiots clearly should know better. They have advanced degrees in relevant fields and they have received considerable feedback on the claims they post or the books they write. We know they have read the critiques so when they persist in repeating falsehoods, there must be another explanation. They must be lying.

Jonathan Wells has a Ph.D. in molecular biology. He has posted numerous articles about junk DNA and he was written a book on the subject (The Myth of Junk DNA). Lots of people have made comments about his blog posts and his book has been widely critiqued. Many of his claims have been shown to be false.

So what do we make of his recent post on Evolution News & Views) (sic) entitled Why All the Fuss Over Some Junk?. We are forced to conclude that Wells is dishonest. Perhaps with the caveat expressed by Peter Medawar many years ago in his review of Père Teihard's The Phenomenon of Man.

Yet the greatest part of it, I shall show, is nonsense, tricked out with a variety of metaphysical conceits, and its author can be excused of dishonesty only on the grounds that he has taken great pains to deceive himself.

What's Wrong with Modern Science?

 
Yesterday and today I'm hanging out with some people who care abut science education. We've had some wonderful conversations. I'm pleased to lean that there are some very smart people who think there's something seriously wrong with the way modern science is progressing. I was delighted to learn that there are a growing number of scientists who think the peer review system is broken. A lot of junk is being published.

Speaking of junk, there's an essay in this week's Nature that qualifies in more ways than one [Rise of the Digital Machine]. Mark Pagel is a biologist at Reading University (UK). He's one of those people who just can't accept the fact that humans don't have several times more genes than an insect or a nematode.
THEME

Genomes & Junk DNA

Humans are almost unimaginably complex, with trillions of cells organized into hundreds of different tissues. But we have scarcely more genes than a fruitfly or a worm, and only about four or five times as many as brewers' yeast or some bacteria. Surprising then that the human genome is 250 times larger than the yeast's. It comprises about 99% 'junk DNA' — genetic code that is not used to make the protein building blocks of life.

You know what's coming next, don't you? We're going to hear about one of the seven silly excuses for why we don't really have junk DNA (see The Deflated Ego Problem). Here's how Martin Pagel sets up his choice of excuse.

Junk DNA gives every appearance of fulfilling the metaphor of the selfish gene. It accumulates in organisms' genomes simply because it is good at accumulating; it can even be harmful. Why we put up with it has long been a mystery.

Increasingly, it seems that the genes that do code for proteins may recruit some or all of this junk DNA to regulate when, where and how much they are expressed. Because nearly every cell in the body carries a complete copy of the genome, something has to tell the genes that make eyes not to switch on in the back of the head, or genes for teeth to stay silent in our toes. Something has to instruct genes to team up to produce complex structures such as hearts and kidneys, or the chemical networks that create our metabolism and physiology.

Astute readers will see where this is going—he's going to use the "regulatory DNA" excuse. All this will accomplish is to demonstrate; (a) Martin Pagel's inability to reason like a scientist by considering evidence that has been accumulated over four decades, and (b) Nature's inability to recognize good science from bad science.

Genes, in effect, use regulation to promote their interests within the bodily phenotype: it is how they vary their exposure to the outside world. Regulation is how we can have over 98.5% similarity to chimpanzees in the sequences of our coding genes, yet differ so utterly from them.

Indeed, the huge quantity of junk DNA in the genomes of most complex organisms may act as a vast digital regulatory mechanism. Until recently many common machines, such as aeroplanes, clocks, and even computers were analogue devices, regulated by levers, springs, heat or pressure. Aeroplanes were flown with a stick, springs drove clocks. Digital regulation — instructions encoded in strings of binary numbers arbitrarily long, and hence precise — enabled complexity to increase. Stealth fighters and space shuttles are so complex that they can be flown only by digital computers, not (analogue) human pilots.

Similarly, the emergence of digital regulation derived from unused stretches of junk DNA may have precipitated the transition from single cells to complex multicellular organisms. Long runs of the four chemical bases that make up DNA can easily act like binary strings. How these stretches bind to a gene can regulate exquisitely the degree and timing of that gene's expression. Tellingly, bacteria and some other single-celled organisms have negligible amounts of junk DNA. They rely far more on analogue systems of gene regulation that are protein-based and less precise.

This is, of course, complete nonsense. We know for a fact that large amounts of the human genome are really junk. We know for a fact that you can have complex regulation by using only a small percentage of the genome (1000 bp per gene, or less than 1% of the genome, per gene is more than sufficent [Junk in Your Genome: Protein-Encoding Genes]. We know for a fact that some single-celled species (amoeba) have huge amounts of junk DNA and some some complex multicellular species have genomes that are much smaller than mammalian genomes (Drosohila melanogaster.

All these facts can be found in basic introductory textbooks. In addition, there is an abundant scientific literature on junk DNA, explaining why defective transposons (for example) really are junk. Why can't scientists like Mark Pagel, and the Nature reviewers, learn about junk DNA beore spouting off? What's wrong with science today?

Science is a process and that process involves collecting evidence and making hypotheses that explain the data. In this case the author has ignored the data showing that much of our genome is junk. He has ignored the evidence that the regulation of gene expression can be easily accomplished without invoking huge amounts of (non-conserved) DNA. He has constructed an hypothesis to explain something that doesn't need explaining; namely, why humans have the same number of genes as other mammals. He has failed to read the literature and failed to consider alternative explanations.

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Creationist Logic

Help me out, dear readers. I can't for the life of me figure out the logic behind the latest posting at Uncommon Descent: If you make a prediction and it doesn’t happen ….

I'm serious. Although I often make fun of the IDiots, I usually try hard to understand the points they are trying to make so I can expose them as nonsensical. But this one has me completely stumped. On the surface the author seems to be saying that "Darwinism" made a prediction "based on core principles" that wasn't fulfilled. This is bad for "Darwinism."

What is that prediction?

The author ("News") starts with a quotation from The Myth of Junk DNA.

In 2010, University of California Distinguished Professor of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology John C. Avise published a book titled Inside the Human Genome: A Case for Non-Intelligent Design, in which he wrote that "noncoding repetitive sequences–'junk DNA'–comprise the vast bulk (at least 50%, and probably much more) of the human genome." Avise argued that pseudogenes, in particular, are evidence against intelligent design. For example, "pseudogenes hardly seem like genomic features that would be designed by a wise engineer. Most of them lie scattered along the chromosomes like useless molecular cadavers." To be sure, "several instances are known or suspected in which a pseudogene formerly assumed to be genomic ‘ junk’ was later deemed to have a functional role in cells. But such cases are almost certainly exceptions rather than the rule. And in any event, such examples hardly provide solid evidence for intelligent design; instead, they seem to point toward the kind of idiosyncratic tinkering for which nonsentient evolutionary processes are notorious."

Jonathan Wells, The Myth of Junk DNA (Seattle: Discovery Institute Press, 2011), pp. 26-27

This is a pretty accurate representation of what John Avise actually says except that it juxtaposes two separate facts. It's true that repetitive DNA sequences—mostly defective transposons—make up about half our genome. Then there's pseudogenes. They are found in the other half and they make up about 1% of the human genome.

Avise, and many others, point out that the presence of pseudogenes is inconsistent with good design and therefore poses a problem for Intelligent Design Creationism.¹ I note that the IDiots have consistently refused to address this problem. Instead, they try and convince their followers that pseudogenes don't exist.

Here's what Avise says in his book Inside the Human Genome: A Case for Non-intelligent design (p. 115). You can see that Wells accurately represented the actual argument that he (Avise) was making.

At face value, pseudogenes hardly seem like genomic features that would be designed by a wise engineer. Most of them lie scattered among the chromosome like useless molecular cadavers. This sentiment does not preclude the possibility that an occasional pseudogene is resuscitated such that it contributes positively to cellular operations, several instances are known or suspected in which a pseudogene formerly assumed to be genomic "junk" was later deemed to have a functional role in cells. But such cases are almost certainly exceptions and not the rule. And in any event, such examples hardly provide solid evidence for intelligent design; instead, they seem to point toward the kind of idiosyncratic genetic tinkering for which nonsentient evolutionary evolutionary processes are notorious.

It's important to make sure you understand the argument that Avise and others are making. When looking at the big picture the presence of thousands of pseudogenes in the human genome is a challenge for those who argue for Intelligent Design Creationism. The fact that a handful of these regions were misidentified as pseudgenes and now turn out to have a function cannot be taken as evidence that all of the 20,000 known pseudogenes have a function.

So, how does Wells deal with this challenge to his belief? On the next page of his book (p. 27) he says ...

But Is It True?
The arguments by Dawkins, Miller, Shermer, Collins, Kitcher, Coyne and Avise rest on the premise that most non-coding DNA is junk, wihout any significnat biological function. Yet a virtual flood of recent evidence shows that they are mistaken. Much of the DNA they claim to be "junk" actually performs important functions in living cells.

The following chapters cite hundreds of scientific articles (many of them freely accessible on the Internet) that testify to those functions—and those articles are only a small sample of a large and growing body of literature on the subject. This does not mean that the authors of those articles are critics of evolution or supporters of intelligent design. Indeed, most of them interpret the evidence within an evolutionary framework. But many of them explicitly point out that the evidence refutes the myth of junk DNA.

This is a classic "bait-and-switch." The argument from Avise and the others is mostly about the presence of pseudogenes. There is solid evidence that many pseudogenes are completely non-functional. There is evidence that non-functional pseudogenes have been inherited from common ancestors, strongly suggesting that the genes were inactivated in ancient ancestors and passed down to modern species as the evolved.

This argument is NOT about "most noncoding DNA." It's about that 1% of the genome that contains known pseudogenes. Unless that point is addressed directly (it isn't) then Wells is guilty of ignoring one of the main arguments of his critics.

But that's not the point of this posting. I'm concerned about the point that "News" makes in the recent posting on Uncommon Descent. He/she says ...

Darwinism predicts something, based on its core principles, and it doesn’t happen. And there are no consequences? Only on planet Darwin. Where all correct predictions originate in Darwin’s theory and are grandfathered as such by his loyal heirs. All incorrect predictions are “proved” to have originated elsewhere, no matter where they actually originated.

What are these predictions of "Darwinism"? It's surely not pseudogenes since no evolutionary theory that I know of predicted pseudogenes. Bacteria don't have many pseudogenes and that's perfectly consistent with evolutionary theory. Plant genomes have lots of pseudogenes and that's perfectly consistent with evolutionary theory. Yeast has a few pseudogenes but not nearly as many as plants and that's perfectly consistent with modern evolutionary theory.

Is "News" referring to junk DNA in general? That's not a prediction of "Darwinism" or any evolutionary theory that I know of. The fact that bacteria have very little junk DNA has never been taken as a fact that overthrows modern evolutionary theory. I'm unaware of any evolutionary biologist who predicted back in the 1960s that most of the mammalian genome would be junk and that this prediction was a requirement of modern evolutionary theory. The arguments of Avise et al. are not based on the "premise" that most of our genome is junk, they're based on the evidence that pseudogenes exist.

No prediction was made so no prediction has been refuted. The point that "News" is making seems illogical.

Unless I'm missing something obvious.

What about the predictions of the IDiots? Casey Luskin explains it [Intelligent Design and the Death of the "Junk-DNA" Neo-Darwinian Paradigm].

Proponents of intelligent design have long maintained that Neo-Darwinism's widely held assumption that our cells contain much genetic "junk" is both dangerous to the progress of science and wrong. As I explain here, design theorists recognize that "Intelligent agents typically create functional things," and thus Jonathan Wells has suggested, "From an ID perspective, however, it is extremely unlikely that an organism would expend its resources on preserving and transmitting so much ‘junk'." [4] Design theorists have thus been predicting the death of the junk-DNA paradigm for many years: ...

and in Another Intelligent Design Prediction Fulfilled: Function for a Pseudogene ...

Darwinists have long made an argument from ignorance, where our lack of present knowledge of the function for a given biological structure is taken as evidence that there is no function and the structure is merely a vestige of evolutionary history. Darwinists have commonly made this mistake with many types of "junk" DNA, now known to have function. In contrast, intelligent agents design objects for a purpose, and therefore intelligent design predicts that biological structures will have function.²

Here's another prediction, according to Barry Arrington on Uncommon Descent [FAQ4 is Open for Comment].

ID does not make scientifically fruitful predictions.

This claim is simply false. To cite just one example, the non-functionality of “junk DNA” was predicted by Susumu Ohno (1972), Richard Dawkins (1976), Crick and Orgel (1980), Pagel and Johnstone (1992), and Ken Miller (1994), based on evolutionary presuppositions. In contrast, on teleological grounds, Michael Denton (1986, 1998), Michael Behe (1996), John West (1998), William Dembski (1998), Richard Hirsch (2000), and Jonathan Wells (2004) predicted that “junk DNA” would be found to be functional.

The Intelligent Design predictions are being confirmed and the Darwinist predictions are being falsified. For instance, ENCODE’s June 2007 results show substantial functionality across the genome in such “junk DNA” regions, including pseudogenes.

Thus, it is a matter of simple fact that scientists working in the ID paradigm carry out and publish research, and they have made significant and successful ID-based predictions.

It seems like it's the IDiots that have hitched their star to a prediction about junk DNA. If any genome turns out to have a substantial amount of junk DNA then Intelligent Design Creationism is refuted. As it turns out, many genomes do have a lot of junk DNA in spite of what Jonathan Wells would have you believe. Thus, Intelligent Design Creationism is no longer a credible scientific hypothesis.

But you knew that already, didn't you?

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1. Most scientists actually argue a more specific point; namely, that the conservation of specific pseudogenes in different species is an especially serious problem for Intelligent Design Creationists.

2. It's interesting that Casey Luskin seems to know something about the motivations of the intelligent designer because when scientists point out that the genome doesn't look like it was designed this is not taken as an argument against the IDiot position. Instead it's taken as illegitimate science as pointed out by Wells in his book (p. 103), "Do arguments based on speculations about a creator or designer have a legitimate place in science? Not according to Canadian biologist Steven Scadding, who once wrote that although he accepted evolutionary theory, he objected to defending it on the grounds that a creator would or would not do certain things. 'Whatever the validity of this theological claim,' Scadding concluded, 'it certainly cannot be defended as a scientific statement, and thus should be given no place is a scientific discussion of evolution."

"Dark matter" as an argument against junk DNA

Opponents of junk DNA have been largely unsuccessful in demonstrating that most of our genome is functional. Many of them are vaguely aware of the fact that "no function" (i.e. junk) is the default hypothesis and the onus is on them to come up with evidence of function. In order to shift, or obfuscate, this burden of proof they have increasingly begun to talk about the "dark matter" of the genome. The idea is to pretend that most of the genome is a complete mystery so that you can't say for certain whether it is junk or functional.

One of the more recent attempts appears in the "Journal Club" section of Nature Reviews Genetics. It focuses on repetitive DNA.

Before looking at that article, let's begin by summarizing what we already know about repetitive DNA. It includes highly repetitive DNA consisting of mutliple tandem repeats of short sequences such as ATATATATAT... or CGACGACGACGA ... or even longer repeats. Much of this is located in centromeric regions of the chromosome and I estimate that functional highly repetitve regions make up about 1% of the genome.[see Centromere DNA and Telomeres]

The other part of repetitive DNA is middle repetitive DNA, which is largely composed of transposons and endogenous viruses, although it includes ribosomal RNA genes and origins of replication. Most of these sequences are dispersed as single copies throughout the genome. It's difficult to determine exactly how much of the genome consists of these middle repetitive sequences but it's certainly more than 50%.

Almost all of the transposon- and virus-related sequences are defective copies of once active transposons and viruses. Most of them are just fragments of the originals. They are evolving at the neutral rate so they look like junk and they behave like junk.¹ That's not selfish DNA because is doesn't transpose and it's not "dark matter." These fragments have all the characterstics of nonfunctional junk in our genome.

We know that the C-value paradox is mostly explained by differing amounts of repetitive DNA in different genomes and this is consistent with the idea that they are junk. We know that less that 10% of our genome is conserved and this fits in with that conclusion. Finally, we know that genetic load arguments indicate that most our genome must be impervious to mutation. Combined, these are all powerful bits of evidence and logic in favor of repetitive sequences being mostly junk DNA.

Now let's look at what Neil Gemmell says in this article.

Gemmell, N.J. (2021) Repetitive DNA: genomic dark matter matters. Nature Reviews Genetics:1-1. [doi: 10.1038/s41576-021-00354-8]

"Repetitive DNA sequences were found in hundreds of thousands, and sometimes millions, of copies in the genomes of most eukaryotes. while widespread and evolutionarily conserved, the function of these repeats was unknown. Provocatively, Britten and Kohne concluded 'a concept that is repugnant to us is that about half of the DNA of higher organisms is trivial or permanently inert.'”"

That's from Britten and Kohne (1968) and it's true that more than 50 years ago those workers didn't like the idea of junk DNA. Britten argued that most of this repetitive DNA was likely to be involved in regulation. Gemmell goes on to describe centromeres and telomeres and mentions that most repetitive DNA was thought to be junk.

"... the idea that much of the genome is junk, maintained and perpetuated by random chance, seemed as broadly unsatisfactory to me as it had to the original authors. Enthralled by the mystery of why half our genome is repetitive DNA, I have followed this field ever since."

Gemmell is not alone. In spite of all the evidence for junk DNA, the majority of scientists don't like the fact that most of our genome is junk. Here's how he justifies his continued skepticism.

"But it was not until the 2000s, as full eukaryotic genome sequences emerged, that we discovered that the repetitive non-coding regions of our genome harbour large numbers of promoters, enhancers, transcription factor binding sites and regulatory RNAs that control gene expression. More recently, the importance of repetitive DNA in both structural and regulatory processes has emerged, but much remains to be discovered and understood. It is time to shine further light on this genomic dark matter."

This appears to be the ENCODE publicity campaign legacy rearing its ugly head once more. Most Sandwalk readers know that the presence of transcription factor binding sites, RNA polymerase binding sites, and junk RNA is exactly what one would predict from a genome full of defective transposons. Most of us know that a big fat sloppy genome is bound to contain millions of spurious binding sites for transcription factors so this says nothing about function.

Apparently Gemmell's skepticism doesn't apply to the ENCODE results so he still thinks that all those bits and pieces of transposons are mysterious bits of dark matter that could be several billion base pairs of functional DNA. I don't know what he imagines they could be doing.

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Photo Credit: The photo shows human chromosomes labelled with a telomere probe (yellow), from Christoher Counter at Duke University.

1. In my book, I cover this in a section called "If it walks like a duck ..." It's a form of abductive reasoning.

Britten, R. and Kohne, D. (1968) Repeated Sequences in DNA. Science 161:529-540. [doi: 10.1126/science.161.3841.529]

More illusions/delusions of James Shapiro and Denis Noble

It was just a few weeks ago that I discussed short articles by Denis Noble and James Shapiro that were published in the journal Biosemiotics [The illusions of Denis Noble] [The illusions of James Shapiro].

Several readers questioned whether Biosemiotics is a real science journal and they were right: it's a kooky journal and that's why it publishes papers by kooks. However, we now have a new paper by Shapiro and Noble that's about to appear in a legitimate scientific journal; albeit, one that has seen better days. This would normally raise red flags concerning peer review but we're long past the time when we can count on peer review to weed out the kooks.

Here's the paper. I'm not going to discuss all the main points because they were covered in my previous posts. I'll just concentrate on the most ridiculous part in order to illustrate the (lack of) quality of this paper.¹

Shapiro, J. and Noble, D. (2021) What prevents mainstream evolutionists teaching the whole truth about how genomes evolve? Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology. [doi: 10.1016/j.pbiomolbio.2021.04.004]

The common belief that the neo-Darwinian Modern Synthesis (MS) was buttressed by the discoveries of molecular biology is incorrect. On the contrary those discoveries have undermined the MS. This article discusses the many processes revealed by molecular studies and genome sequencing that contribute to evolution but nonetheless lie beyond the strict confines of the MS formulated in the 1940s. The core assumptions of the MS that molecular studies have discredited include the idea that DNA is intrinsically a faithful self-replicator, the one-way transfer of heritable information from nucleic acids to other cell molecules, the myth of “selfish DNA,” and the existence of an impenetrable Weismann Barrier separating somatic and germ line cells. Processes fundamental to modern evolutionary theory include symbiogenesis, biosphere interactions between distant taxa (including viruses), horizontal DNA transfers, natural genetic engineering, organismal stress responses that activate intrinsic genome change operators, and macroevolution by genome restructuring (distinct from the gradual accumulation of local microevolutionary changes in the MS). These 21st Century concepts treat the evolving genome as a highly formatted and integrated Read-Write (RW) database rather than a Read-Only Memory (ROM) collection of independent gene units that change by random copying errors. Most of the discoverers of these macroevolutionary processes have been ignored in mainstream textbooks and popularizations of evolutionary biology, as we document in some detail. Ironically, we show that the active view of evolution that emerges from genomics and molecular biology is much closer to the 19th century ideas of both Darwin and Lamarck. The capacity of cells to activate evolutionary genome change under stress can account for some of the most negative clinical results in oncology, especially the sudden appearance of treatment-resistant and more aggressive tumors following therapies intended to eradicate all cancer cells. Knowing that extreme stress can be a trigger for punctuated macroevolutionary change suggests that less lethal therapies may result in longer survival times.

The section on "selfish DNA" is the one that seems to have the highest number of misleading and false statements per paragraph.

1.4. The end of “selfish” or “junk” DNA

A major shortcoming of the MS is that it was based on a “gene-centric” view, which assumed that the genome is basically a collection of “genes” that are the protein-coding units of heredity and heritable variation. As we saw in the quotation from Goldschmidt's 1940 book, this view failed to take the evolutionary importance of chromosome structure into account (Goldschmidt, 1940). It also blinded evolutionary biologists to the importance of McClintock's mid- 20th Century discovery of mobile “controlling elements” (McClintock, 1987). Both the ideas of genetic transposition and control of gene expression by these non-coding mobile elements did not fit within the narrow confines of the MS concepts of genome function and variation. A further empirical assault on the limited MS conceptual framework came in the late 1960s when Britten and Kohne discovered that a significant fraction of genomic DNA from complex eukaryotes consists of highly repetitive sequences rather than the unique coding sequences expected to make up the hereditary material (Britten and Kohne, 1968).

• The title is ridiculous since no respectable scientist ever equated selfish DNA with junk DNA [Selfish genes and transposons].

• The Modern Synthesis (MS) was not based on a "gene-centric" view.
• For the past 50 years, no respectable scientist, and no knowledgeable expert in molecular evolution, has restricted the definition of "gene" to just protein-coding genes.
• For the past 50 years, no expert in molecular evolution has ever thought that the genome is just a collection of protein-coding genes.
• For the past 50 years, experts in molecular biology have known about transposons and have considered the view that some of them might be "controlling elements." They have concluded that most transposon-related sequences are just fragments of defective transposons with no biological function.
• Nobody cares whether mobile genetic elements fit within the narrow confines of the Modern Synthesis as described by Huxley and other in the 1940s because no exeprt in molecular evolution has believed in that view of evolution since the late 1960s.
• The Britten and Kohne paper established that the genomes of most multicellular eukaryotes contain large amounts of repetivie DNA. This was an attempt to resolve the C-value paradox. Britten and Kohne didn't like the idea that this could be junk DNA so they offered some speculation about function. However, futher data established that most of this repetitive DNA is, indeed, junk and Britten and Kohn's speculations have been discredited. Britten and Kohn were attempting to interpret their result within the context of the adaptationist views that characterized the the Modern Synthesis back then. The correct interpretation of their results came with the overthrow of the Modern Synthesis and the adoption of a new view of evolutionary theory that focused on Neutral Theory, Nearly-Neural Theory, and the importance of random geneitc drift. Shaprio and Noble missed that revolution so they continue to attack an old-fashioned strawman version of evolutionay theory.

Before continuing, it's important to realize that by the early 1970s selectionist thinking had been abandoned by the experts in genome evolution. By 1978 Gould and Lewontin tried, unsccessfully, to convince all other biologists to abandon the old selectionist way of thinking [The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm]. James Shapiro and Denis Noble are among those other biologists who didn't get the message.

In order to apply selectionist thinking to explain the presence of so much non-coding DNA, evolutionary biologists called this unexpected portion of the genome “junk DNA” (Ohno, 1972) or “selfish DNA” (Orgel and Crick, 1980). Richard Dawkins used an extreme view of these “selfish genes” to erect a whole philosophy of strictly passive evolutionary gradualism (Dawkins, 1976). Today we know that the human genome contains at least 30X as much repetitive non-coding DNA as protein-coding sequences (Lander et al., 2001). Repetitive DNA provides formatting signals for transcription, epigenetic modification and chromosome mechanics and also is the most variable component in the evolutionary diversification of complex genomes (Symonová and Howell, 2018; Subirana et al., 2015; Matsubara et al., 2016; CioffiMde et al., 2015; Chalopin et al., 2015; Shao et al., 2019; Böhne et al., 2008; Li et al., 2016; Oliver et al., 2013). A 2013 plot of organismal complexity against protein-coding and non-coding DNA showed that coding DNA peaked at approximately ∼3 × 10⁷ bp, while the non-coding DNA increased linearly with growing complexity up to ∼2–3 x 10¹⁰ bp (Liu et al., 2013). In other words, non-coding DNA tracked organismal complexity better than the protein-coding genes. The “encyclopedia of DNA elements” (ENCODE) project, which largely abandoned the term “gene,” revealed that the large majority of the so-called junk DNA is actively transcribed in a regulated manner, indicating that it is functional (Consortium, 2012; Pennisi, 2012).

• It is completely, totally, ridiculous to say that the idea of junk DNA was due to selectionist thinking. The first statement in this paragraph is powerful evidence that Shaprio and Noble don't know what they are talking about. The concept of junk DNA is a rejection of selectionist thinking.
• The use of "noncoding DNA" is what's called a "tell."
• Again, equating junk DNA with selfish DNA is stupid. If all the excess DNA were selfish then it isn't junk because it has a function.
• Richard Dawkins' view on evolution is closer to the old-fashioned adaptationist view that was abandoned by the experts by the time he wrote The Selfish Gene. Dawkins book is not really about "genes," however, as is clear to anyone who has read it. He's talking about any piece of DNA that confers a fitness advantage. The Dawkins strawman is a favorite target of the Third Way types but it's just a strawman.
• No significant proportion of repetitive DNA has a function in spite of the references quoted above.
• There is no significant correlation between organismal compexity and noncoding DNA. Lots of very similar species, such as onions, have very different genome sizes.

• No knowledgeable scientist since the 1980s thinks there should be a significant correlation between the number of genes and organismal complexity. We know that most of the phenotypic differences between multicellular species are due to changes in the timing and amount of expression of a standard set of genes. This is the main discovery of evolutionary-developmental biology (evo-devo), another revolution that Shapiro and Nobel missed. They should educate themselves by reading Sean B. Carroll's books.
• The ENCODE researchers did lots of silly things but they did NOT abandon the term "gene."
• The idea that most of our genome is functional because of ENCODE is laughable in 2021. The fact that Shapiro and Noble would bring this up is another "tell" and the fact that they would reference Elizabeth Pennisi is even more revealing. These guys are incapable of thinking critically.

Shaprio and Noble then describe a few examples of repetitive DNA sequences that have a known function and they point out that a number of noncoding genes have been indentified. They imply that these functional sequences make up a signifcant fraction of the genome thus calling the concept of junk DNA into question. They close the section with,

Clearly, none of the eminent scientists who wrote about junk or selfish DNA could possibly have imagined the wide range of cellular functionalities that we know today are executed by ncRNA molecules. The idea that a genome was just a collection of protein coding sequences has proved completely inadequate.

• I don't know about you, dear reader, but I'll match those "eminent scientists" against Shapiro and Noble any day. I'd love to see them try to defend their views in a public debate against some of the leading proponents of junk DNA. I know where my money would be.

Let me close by quoting the last chapter of this paper. I don't intend to comment on it except to say that it gives new meaning to the word "irony."

The campaign to sustain the Modern Synthesis causes real harm in a number of different ways. Among doctors treating bacterial infections, ignorance of real-world evolutionary processes has led to a situation in which the available antibiotics have lost their effectiveness against many life-threatening conditions (CDC et al., 2019). Among the general public, the inability to comprehend the potential all living organisms possess for transferring and reorganizing genomic configurations makes them unprepared to form sound judgements about how society should utilize its growing arsenal of biotechnology tools acquired from our microbial neighbors, like CRISPR (Doudna, 2020). Among oncologists, MS thinking prevents the practitioners treating cancer patients from recognizing the dangers of overtreating tolerable tumors in ways that may provoke a macroevolutionary transition to a far more lethal and untreatable disease (Heng, 2019). Finally, in the battle against obscurantism and anti-evolution prejudice, insistence on an outdated set of assertions about how life can change itself leaves the defenders of rigorous scientific inquiry without satisfactory responses to critics. Clearly, the time has come for the mainstream evolution community to recognize and join the scientific reality of the 21st Century.

Finally, one of the most important properties of kooks is that they find each other and they tend to hang out together, either physically or virtually. I'm not sure why this happens since they often espouse mutually exclusive views. I'm guessing that we can explain it in two different ways: (1) they are all outsiders fighting against a common enemy; namely, real science, and (2) they lack critical thinking skills so they don't see the flaws in each other's arguments.

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1. In case you didn't recognize the quality from the title.

Human genome books

Theme
Genomes
& Junk DNA

I'm trying to read all the recent books on the human genome and anything related. There are a lot of them. Here's a list with some brief comments. You should buy some of these books. There are others you should not buy under any circumstances.

A physicist tries to understand junk DNA

Rob Sheldon has a PhD. in physics and a M.A. in religion.¹ With two strikes against him already, he attempts to understand biology by discussing evolution, junk DNA, and the Onion Test [Physicist suggests: “Onion test” for junk DNA is challenge to Darwinism, not ID]. As you might imagine, posting on Uncommon Descent in support of Intelligent Design Creationism leads directly to strike three.

The Onion Test was created by Ryan Gregory in 2007 [The Onion Test] and published in the scientific literature by Palazzo and Gregory in 2014. It goes like this. Take your favorite hypothesis suggesting that most of the DNA in the human genome is functional and use it to explain why the onion, Allium cepa, needs a genome that is five times larger than the human genome. Then explain why closely related species of onion need twenty times more DNA than humans.

Peter Larsen: "There is no such thing as 'junk DNA'"

The March 2018 issue of Chromosome Research is a Special Issue on Transposable Elements and Genome Function. I found it as I was doing my routine search for papers on junk DNA in order to see whether scientists are finally beginning to understand the issue. Peter Larsen (guest editor) wrote the introduction to the special issue. He says ...

There is no such thing as “junk DNA.” Indeed, a suite of discoveries made over the past few decades have put to rest this misnomer and have identified many important roles that so-called junk DNA provides to both genome structure and function (this special issue; Biémont and Vieira 2006; Jeck et al. 2013; Elbarbary et al. 2016; Akera et al. 2017; Chen and Yang 2017; Chuong et al. 2017). Nevertheless, given the historical focus on coding regions of the genome, our understanding of the biological function of non-coding regions (e.g., repetitive DNA, transposable elements) remains somewhat limited, and therefore, all those enigmatic and poorly studied regions of the genome that were once identified as junk are instead best viewed as genomic “dark matter.”

Nils Walter disputes junk DNA: (3) Defining 'gene' and 'function'

I'm discussing a recent paper published by Nils Walter (Walter, 2024). He is trying to explain the conflict between proponents of junk DNA and their opponents. His main focus is building a case for large numbers of non-coding genes.

This is the third post in the series. The first one outlines the issues that led to the current paper and the second one describes Walter's view of a paradigm shift.

-Nils Walter disputes junk DNA: (1) The surprise

-Nils Walter disputes junk DNA: (2) The paradigm shaft

Any serious debate requires some definitions and the debate over junk DNA is no exception. It's important that everyone is on the same page when using specific words and phrases. Nils Walter recognizes this so he begins his paper with a section called "Starting with the basics: Defining 'function' and 'gene'."

Junk & Jonathan: Part 9—Chapter 6

This is part 9 of my review of The Myth of Junk DNA. For a list of other postings on this topic see the links below. For other postings on junk DNA check out the links in Genomes & Junk DNA in the "theme box" below or in the sidebar under "Themes."

• Junk & Jonathan: Part 1—Getting the History Correct
• Junk & Jonathan: Part 2— What Did Biologists Really Say About Junk DNA?
• Junk & Jonathan: Part 3—The Preface: Preface
• Junk & Jonathan: Part 4—Chapter 1: The Controversy over Darwinian Evolution
• Junk & Jonathan: Part 5—Chapter 2: Junk DNA: The Last Icon of Evolution?
• Junk & Jonathan: Part 6—Chapter 3: Most DNA Is Transcribed into RNA
• Junk & Jonathan: Part 7—Chapter 4: Introns and the Splicing Code
• Junk & Jonathan: Part 8—Chapter 5: Pseudogenes—Not so Pseudo After All

Jumping Genes and Repetitive DNA
The title of Chapter 6 is "Jumping Genes and Repetitive DNA." Wells describes transposons as jumping genes and includes them in the category of "Repetitive Non-Protein-Coding DNA." This category makes up 50% of the genome, according to Wells. The breakdown is as follows. LINES 21%; SINES 13%; retroviral-like elements 8%; simple sequence repeats 5%; and DNA-only transposons 3%. These percentages are similar to those published in a wide variety of textbooks and scientific papers. [What's in Your Genome?] [Junk in your Genome: LINEs] [Junk in Your Genome: SINES]


Many LINES and SINES are Functional

Most of the transposons in the human genome are fragments or otherwise mutated versions of the original mobile elements. This is a good reason for assigning them to the junk DNA category. They are a form of pseudogene. What this means is that half of our genome is composed of defective transposons that can't "jump." This is non-functional DNA, otherwise known as "junk."

This conclusion is unacceptable to Jonathan Wells. In order to prove that junk DNA is a myth he must show that most of this DNA has a function. He begins with a section called "Many LINES and SINEs are functional.

Theme

Genomes
& Junk DNAThe first evidence for functionality comes from the data showing that most of the genome is transcribed—the main theme of Chapter 3. If most of these defective transposons are transcribed then it seems likely that they have a function. But the evidence for widespread transcription is not widely accepted and one of the main criticisms is that it's extremely difficult to tell which repeated sequences are actually transcribed and which ones just happen to be very similar to a family member that is transcribed. We know that active LINES and SINES have to be transcribed at some time and we know that many defective transposons will still be transcribed even if they are non-functional. The question is not whether any transposons are transcribed, it's whether all (or most) of them are. The answer is almost certainly that very few are transcribed on a regular basis. The pervasive transcription reported in some papers is most likely accidental transcription at a very low level or artifact.¹

Nishihara, H., Smit, A.F., and Okada, N. (2006) Functional noncoding sequences derived from SINEs in the mammalian genome. Genome Res. 16:864-874.

The first "function" paper Wells mentions is Nishihara et al. (2006). These workers characterized a new class of SINES in the human genome. They consist of a hybrid of 5S RNA and a tRNA (~300 bp). These SINES are found in most vertebrates (fish, amphibians, birds, mammals). There are about 1000 of these SINEs in the human genome and in 105 of them there seems to be more sequence conservation in the central portion of the sequence than expected from junk DNA. For example, the overall sequence similarity between human and zebrafish is about 59% in a stretch of 338 nucleotides. (The authors refer to these as regions that are "under strong selective constraint." That's a bit exaggerated.)

This section contains three other examples of sequence similarities in a small class of transposons. These are the only examples where he makes the case for widespread functionality of defective transposons.

Wells is happy to accept the arguments that sequence similarity is evidence of homology and also of function.² Several possible functions were ruled out in these studies but it's possible that they have some undiscovered function that results in moderate sequence conservation. If this turns out to be true it would mean that 0.01% of the genome should be moved from the "junk" category to the "functional" category.

Some Specific Functions of LINES and SINES

Wells then proceeds to a discussion of papers that demonstrate a function for individual transposon fragments. Before we look at those studies, it's worth keeping the big picture in mind. A typical eukaryotic genome has a million defective transposons and a dozen or so functional transposons that are still capable of jumping to new locations. If you examine the genomes of a dozen or so eukaryotes you can expect to find some examples where these bits of DNA have been co-opted to perform some new function. If you collect together all these examples from many different species then it looks like an impressive array of functional transposon sequences but impressions can be deceptive. It's still true that 99.9% of defective transposons are junk.

This section of the book consists of four pages of specific examples of presumed functional transposon-like sequences from mouse, rat, human, hamster, silkworm, fruit fly, and Arabidopsis (plant). There are 54 references to the scientific literature. Wells makes no attempt to asses the reliability of these studies, nor does he indicate whether the claims have been independently confirmed by other labs.

It's a typical ploy of creationists to focus on specific examples of unusual adaptations and ignore the context. In this case, all those specific individual examples don't amount to a hill of beans when compared to the vast majority of junk in eukaryotic genomes.

However, in fairness it's not just Jonathan Wells and the creationists who fail to see the forest for the trees. There are many scientists who also think that the evidence quoted by Wells is conclusive proof that junk DNA is a myth. Wells has no trouble finding such scientists whose views are expressed in the scientific literature.

Walters, R.D., Kugel, J.A., and Goodrich, J.A. (2009) Critical Review (sic): InvAluable Junk: The Cellular Impact and Function of Alu and B2 RNAs. Life 61:831-837.

Finding that Alu and B2 SINEs are transcribed, both as distinct RNA polymerase III transcripts and as part of RNA polymerase II transcripts, and that these SINE encoded RNAs indeed have biological functions has refuted the historical notion that SINEs are merely "junk DNA."

Endogenous Retroviruses

About 8% of your genome consists of endogenous retroviruses. Most of them are defective, usually because large parts of them have been deleted. Some are still capable of producing viable retrovirus, like HIV or hepatitis B. There are about 30,000 loci in your genome where endogenous retroviruses are located.

Endogenous retroviruses contain strong transcriptional promoters since they have to produce a lot of transcripts when they are induced. Some of these small promoter regions (called "LTRs") have become incorporated into the promoter regions of regular genes. What happened is that millions of years ago a retrovirus accidentally integrated into the genome near the 5′ end of a gene and when parts of the endogenous retrovirus were lost by deletion the remaining retroviral promoter region became active leading to enhanced transcription of the adjacent gene. Over time this piece of the retrovirus evolved to become an integral part of the regulation of the gene.

Wells describes several examples of such events in different mammals. He also describes a famous example where expression of a modified envelope protein from a defective endogenous retrovirus has taken on a role in the development of the mammalian placenta. Together, these examples of co-opted retroviral sequences account for about a dozen of the 30,000 copies in your genome. Naturally, this is assumed to be proof that none of the defective endogenous retroviruses are junk. That's the logic of creationists.

Francis Collins and Repetitive Elements

The last section of this chapter is pure rhetoric. Wells is upset because Francis Collins, a Christian, wrote the following in The Language of God (pages 135-136):

Even more compelling evidence for a common ancestor comes from the study of what are known as ancient repetitive elements (AREs). These arise from "jumping genes," which are capable of copying and inserting themselves in various other locations in the genome, usually without any functional consequences. Mammalian genomes are littered with such AREs, with roughly 45 percent of the human genome made up of such flotsam and jetsam. When one aligns sections of the human and mouse genomes, anchored by the appearance of gene counterparts that occur in the same order, one can usually also identify AREs in approximately the same location in these two genomes.

Some of these may have been lost in one species or the other, but many of them remain in a position that is most consistent with their having arrived in the genome of a common mammalian ancestor, and having been carried along ever since. Of course, some might argue that these are actually functional elements placed there by the Creator for a good reason, and our discounting them as "junk DNA" just betrays our current level of ignorance. And indeed, some small fraction of them may play important regulatory roles. But certain examples severely strain the credulity of that explanation. The process of transposition often damages the jumping gene. There are AREs throughout the human and mouse genomes that were truncated when they landed, removing any possibility of their functioning. In many cases, one can identify a decapitated and utterly defunct ARE in parallel positions in the human and mouse genome.

Wells is upset because this is a double-barreled attack on intelligent design. Not only does Collins describe these sequences as junk but he also uses them as evidence of common ancestry. This is one of the reason why creationists like Wells maintain that junk DNA is used to support evolution.

Wells says,

Collins's argument rests on the assumption that those repetitive elements ... are nonfunctional. Yet their similar position in the human and mouse genomes could mean that they are performing some function in both. Given the rate at which functions are being discovered, Collins's assumption seems foolhardy, and his argument could easily collapse in the face of new scientific discoveries.

As long as most of these repetitive elements remain non-functional they pose a serious problem for Intelligent Design Creationists. The IDiots have been wishing for evidence of function for 20 years but "wishing" isn't a very scientific argument. Given the rate at which functions are being discovered, it's going to be a long, long time before all those hundreds of thousands of repetitive elements are assigned a function (i.e. never!). The vast majority of them are junk and discovery of a few co-opted sequences isn't going to change that fact.

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1. As a general rule, Wells "forgets" to mention when one of his "facts" is disputed in the scientific literature. Like most creationists, he is delighted to quote any scientific studies that confirm his bias but he is somewhat more reluctant to quote papers that don't. In this case—pervasive transcription—the criticisms in the scientific literature are so well-known that he is forced to discuss them in Chapter 9.

2. This is a bit strange coming from someone who doesn't believe in evolution but logic has never been a strong point is Wells' writing. Note that Wells does not accept the corollary argument that lack of conservation implies lack of function.