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The Dervish House: a question
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gallyangel
Posted 2012-08-20 1:19 AM (#4009)
Subject: The Dervish House: a question



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Location: The Wilds of Washington		I am right in the middle of The Dervish House and I have got a question. I thought the fine minds around here might have the answer.

One of the plot points is a machine which encodes data into DNA. McDonald explains to us about the 2% encoding DNA and the rest being junk DNA, noncoding.
My question is this: is this a correct and modern understanding, conforming to the cutting edge of DNA knowledge?
I was under the impression that this view of DNA is 20 or more years old, and the data now, the cutting edge of the science thinks the whole concept of junk DNA is nonsense. That the concept of junk DNA is arrogant and lacks any understanding of subtlety, which is a common science failure. That it is closer to say all the DNA does something, it is just we are only now understanding the true complexities involved, which leads us to the slow unraveling of what it all does.

So which vision is correct? I can forgive a lot, but if you screw up on the science by using an out-of-data understanding and then extrapolate forward from there, that is a fundamental SF no-no as far as I am concerned.

gallyangel
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valashain
Posted 2012-08-24 11:05 AM (#4023 - in reply to #4009)
Subject: Re: The Dervish House: a question



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Location: The Netherlands		To the best of my knowledge most, not all mind you, of what is colloquially referred to as junk DNA still has no known biological function. There have been experiments where some of it has been removed without an observable effect on the organism which does suggest that it really doesn't do anything. It doesn't sound too unlikely to me that over the course of evolution we have picked up some useless baggage. That being said, I very much doubt we are even close to a full understanding of what DNA does.

Edited by valashain 2012-08-24 11:08 AM
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valashain
Posted 2012-09-05 1:48 PM (#4108 - in reply to #4009)
Subject: Re: The Dervish House: a question



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Location: The Netherlands		Hmm, came across a bunch of articles recently that suggest that up to 80% of our DNA does have a biological function. My grasp of genetics nowhere near good enough to say how solid those results are. From what I have been reading I get the impression they still only have a vague idea of what that DNA might be doing but that they are pretty sure it is doing something. Looks like there is more research to be done in this area.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-19202141

The BBC article is a starting point and very superficial, you need to dig a little deeper to get any more detailed information.
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justifiedsinner
Posted 2012-09-07 10:14 AM (#4113 - in reply to #4009)
Subject: Re: The Dervish House: a question



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The idea that 98% of human DNA was junk was always arrant nonsense. Why would a biologic organism waste so much energy carrying around stuff it doesn't use? It had more to do with large ego types like Craig Venter not wanting to admit that they had spent a billion dollars decoding the genome and found the problem was bigger than they thought. The ENCODE project which recently published its results from tracking which genes are active in which tissues and found that 80% of the genome is active. Only 2% codes for actual proteins the rest seems to be involved in control and development. Nor does this rule out the other 20% having a purpose, There are several decades of work ahead to determine what is really going on.
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