Via Reddit: An evolutionary biologist at the University of Houston has published new calculations that indicate no more than 25 percent of the human genome is functional. That is in stark contrast to suggestions by scientists with the ENCODE project that as much as 80 percent of the genome is functional.
In work published online in Genome Biology and Evolution, Dan Graur reports the functional portion of the human genome probably falls between 10 percent and 15 percent, with an upper limit of 25 percent. The rest is so-called junk DNA, or useless but harmless DNA...
The functional portion of the genome is described as that which has a selected-effect function, that is, a function that arose through and is maintained by natural selection. Protein-coding genes, RNA-specifying genes and DNA receptors are examples of selected-effect functions. In his model, only functional portions of the genome can be damaged by deleterious mutations; mutations in nonfunctional portions are neutral since functionless parts can be neither damaged nor improved.
In work published online in Genome Biology and Evolution, Dan Graur reports the functional portion of the human genome probably falls between 10 percent and 15 percent, with an upper limit of 25 percent. The rest is so-called junk DNA, or useless but harmless DNA...
The functional portion of the genome is described as that which has a selected-effect function, that is, a function that arose through and is maintained by natural selection. Protein-coding genes, RNA-specifying genes and DNA receptors are examples of selected-effect functions. In his model, only functional portions of the genome can be damaged by deleterious mutations; mutations in nonfunctional portions are neutral since functionless parts can be neither damaged nor improved.
5 comments:
I wonder how many cancers are going the result of junk DNA becoming active?
How much of our intellect do we use?
Sounds like the same thing.
Junk DNA or function unknown?
“We need to know the functional fraction of the human genome in order to focus biomedical research on the parts that can be used to prevent and cure disease,” he said. “There is no need to sequence everything under the sun. We need only to sequence the sections we know are functional.”
Oh.
Rather like my ~library file.
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