Intricate Toiling Found In Nooks of DNA Once Believed to Stand Idle

Washington Post ^ | 6/14/07 | Rick Weiss

[Michael_Michaelangelo]

The first concerted effort to understand all the inner workings of the DNA molecule is overturning a host of long-held assumptions about the nature of genes and their role in human health and evolution, scientists reported yesterday.

The new perspective reveals DNA to be not just a string of biological code but a dauntingly complex operating system that processes many more kinds of information than previously appreciated.

The findings, from a project involving hundreds of scientists in 11 countries and detailed in 29 papers being published today, confirm growing suspicions that the stretches of "junk DNA" flanking hardworking genes are not junk at all. But the study goes further, indicating for the first time that the vast majority of the 3 billion "letters" of the human genetic code are busily toiling at an array of previously invisible tasks.

[Tribune7]

the designer made serious errors, wasting millions of bases of DNA on a blueprint full of junk and scribbles. Evolution, in contrast, can easily explain them as nothing more than failed experiments in a random process…
Ken Miller, 1994
Life’s Grand Design

And note that Michael Behe -- using ID -- predicted 10 years ago that "junk DNA" would be found not to be junk.

[TChris]

Sorry. Did a search using “DNA” and thought the coast was clear. :)

No worries! I don't consider it a duplicate, since they're different articles on the same subject. I just thought the other one might be of interest as well.

[csense]

The expectation was...

So many predic...er, expectations, so little space on the cutting room floor...

...that many of the most active DNA sequences in humans would be prevalent in other mammals, too, because evolution tends to save and reuse what works best. But more than half were not found in other creatures, which suggests they may not be that important in people, either, said Ewan Birney of the European Bioinformatics Institute in Cambridge, England, a coordinator of the Encode effort.

"I think of them as gate-crashers at a party," Birney said. "They appeared by chance over evolutionary time . . . neither to the organism's benefit nor to its hindrance. That is quite an interesting shift in perspective for many biologists."

"Gate-crahsers at a party"

And this is supposed to be serious, objective science.
Excuse me while I laugh.