Posted on 09/06/2012 4:26:18 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
For the past decade, scientists have been working on the assumption that 20,000 genes, less than 2 percent of the total genome, underpin human biology. But a massive international project called ENCODE has just revealed that plenty of the remaining 98 percent, once tossed aside as "junk DNA", is in fact incredibly important.
In fact, the project—known more formally as the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements—reveals that 80 percent of that "junk DNA" is biochemically active. Add to that the fact that large stretches of DNA that appeared to serve no purpose actually contain over 400,000 regulators that help activate or silence genes, and the scientific community is surprised to say the least.
The finding required an international team of 442 scientists and a decade of research to come to fruition. But, according to Ewan Birney of the European Bioinformatics Institute in the UK who spoke to the Wall Street Journal, the discovery "is like a huge set of floodlights being switched on".
The findings will shake up biology for good, and are already starting to help scientists better understand disease. It will, however, take a long time for scientists to get to grips with the vast quantities of information this research yields. To give you some sense of scale, the main research findings alone are being published in 30 central papers in Nature, Genome Biology and Genome Research. With plenty more to come, biologists will be kept busy for some time.
If you're keen to read more about the new findings and how they'll change science, Ed Yong has an extremely thorough—yet incredibly readable—account you should take a look at. [ENCODE via Not Exactly Rocket Science]
This is a call for more research funding.
ain’t evolution grand?
all that encoded information out of nothing
The amount of time to develop the human genome randomly approaches infinity.
infinity- another totally logical reasonable and scientific concept
my kids were just joking yesterday about writing a story about the man who discovers that last digit of “pi”
> The finding required an international team of 442
> scientists and a decade of research to come to fruition.
Ken Ham once said with his characteristic half-smile that such research proves no intelligence is necessary to create life.
I never bought the “junk DNA” idea.
“The Human Genome Is Far More Complex Than Scientists Thought”
Really?????? Who’d a thunk it?
This cannot be correct, as it goes against the existing consensus....
Once again we are reminded that established science is rarely setting on firm ground.
wacky evolutionists, always late to the party.......
400,000 little teeny, tiny regulators ~ and they work in tandem, separately, with groups, in long strings, short bursts ~ and next thing you know they look like the makings of the supercomputers behind all this multicellular life stuff eh!
It's also a call for sheer amazement at Gods creation. The click through is a great write up;
Evolutionists will have to work overtime ti figure out how it all evolved without God!
God reveals Himself through his Word AND his creation.
Every time I read a story about a new discovery it cause me to meditate on God’s greatness.
Others take the opportunity to laugh and hoot and roll their eyes.
Paging Captain Obvious!
Well Duuuh.
Well Duuuh.
I wonder if the standard line we hear about having “98% of the same genes as a chimpanzee” is based on the entire genome, or if they excluded this “junk dna” from that assessment?
Largely the latter from what I understand. I've never bought the idea of "junk DNA". It's all just stuff they didn't know about yet. God's creation is wonderful. Talk to an information theorist sometime about the information density of DNA sometime. It's amazing.
——For the past decade, scientists have been working on the assumption that 20,000 genes, less than 2 percent of the total genome, underpin human biology.-—
Ah...the fallacy of evolution...they presume a evolutionary beginning and roll their eyes at a creator
Yet who creates something and 98 % of it is junk ?
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