And of course Wells cites multiple scientists who have used junk DNA as an argument against intelligent design.
They have degenerated into junk DNA. Much of the large human genome is comprised of these types of junk DNA that are no longer active.
Rather, it is selfish or junk DNA, a molecular parasite that, over many generations, has disseminated itself throughout the genome through some sort of transpositional process.
But since the first draft sequence of the human genome was released in 2000, scientists have realized that junk DNA plays a key role in switching genes on and off.
Junk DNA fell in spite of not because of Darwinian thinking.
He cites a 1978 paper that showed a link between the gene behind sickle cell disease and a variation in a section of junk DNA. Jacobson dismisses as poppycock the notion that noncoding DNA was understood back then.
It focused narrowly on areas in and around active genes, ignoring the 98.5% of genomic material known as "junk DNA." This process pinpointed 25, 000 genetic landmarks called SNPS (single nucleotide polymorphisms, or "snips"), places where a single dna letter varies from one person to the next.
Collins, the force behind the mapping of the human genome and now the director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, accused the firm of hijacking drug research with flimsy patents covering huge strips of so-called junk DNA, biological bits once thought insignificant but now central to the work of disease hunters.
Mervyn Jacobson read about Simons' bumpy journey and was smitten with the idea of finding value in junk DNA. In 1989 they formed GeneType and applied for their first patent covering noncoding regions and HLA. In 2000 GeneType pulled off a reverse merger with a publicly traded Australian shell company that formerly mined for gold.
Your point (B), that the genome is full of junk-DNA, is simply wrong on the facts.
Instead, they lurk deep inside "junk" or "dark" DNA, the mysterious and seemingly inactive regions that compose 98.5% of the genome and whose functions are unknown.
Instead, the RNA itself is busy doing jobs that were once thought to be the prerogative of proteins: regulating the transcription of other genes, protecting cells from viral attack and even keeping control of bits of DNA that really are junk (or, more accurately, are parasitic on the whole genomic apparatus).
ECONOMIST: Genomics has not yet delivered the drugs, but it will
Wells provides many other examples of evolutionary scientists who predicted that most of the noncoding DNA in the genome would be junk.
Simons' breakthrough in finding meaning in the junk dates to 1987, when he was setting up a DNA diagnostics business in the San Francisco area for an Australian company.
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