from the disfunction-is-still-a-function—right? dept.
The human genome consists of six billions rungs of DNA — but how much of this DNA is actually doing anything important? Two years ago research emerged that suggested that a large proportion of DNA, 80 percent, was functional. This figure came from interpretations of research conducted by the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE).
This estimate was almost immediately taken up by news outlets and received a lot of media attention, as well as backlash from other geneticists including Dr. Dan Graur who called the findings "absurd".
Now a new study, lead by Dr. Gerton Lunter from the University of Oxford's Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics in the UK, has instead found that only 8.2 percent of human DNA is functional. Yes, a jump from 80 to 8.2 percent seems a bit extreme — and you may be asking how these two research groups came to such drastically different conclusions? As University of Melbourne researcher Dr. Charles Robin explains, the disparity lies in the definition of the term "functional".
[Source]: http://sciencematters.unimelb.edu.au/2014/11/how-much-of-your-dna-is-functional/
[Paper]: http://www.plosgenetics.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pgen.1004525
(Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday November 16 2014, @09:29PM
the disparity lies in the definition of the term "functional".
Ah yeah see some won't call JVM hosted languages functional until the JVM implements tail call recursion natively (which maybe in Nov 2014 it finally does?). Although reoccur is close enough for Clojure purposes. Sorry bad joke.
(Score: 1) by Doctor on Sunday November 16 2014, @09:44PM
The title for the article gave me "who cares" as my first response. Of course, reading the fine summary made me realize that, of course, the geneticists would care as it would tell them how much junk they can ignore when trying to figure out how to genetically upgrade the human race so we can be like the X-Men! Or maybe do something useful like figure out what diseases we can correct or something.
Point is the title of the article here did not make me instantly go, "Wow, I wonder how much is junk?" Luckily, I do at least read the summaries in some cases.
"Anybody remotely interesting is mad in some way." - The Doctor
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Sunday November 16 2014, @10:18PM
The difference between 8% and 80% in functional genome is the difference between applying for a grant and saying "hey, we can figure this stuff out in 8 years." or saying "hey, we can figure this stuff out in 80 years.".
compiling...
(Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday November 16 2014, @10:25PM
Well, assuming you're into evolution, the junk came from somewhere and it would be interesting to watch it over time and across species. Think of all the fun you can have doing forensics on unused space on a linux box.
If you're into creationism, first of all sorry, secondly as the word of god or cthulhu or whoever, you can't put the word of god into the sequence for hemoglobin because then you won't get hemoglobin but in the junk space you could find all kinds of fascinating stuff.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by opinionated_science on Sunday November 16 2014, @10:00PM
The problem with these studies is the idea of "functional". Biology doesn't care so long as the organism can reproduce. Therefore the quantity of DNA for every organism is exactly what is required to propagate that generation to the next - unless it isn't.
Since the sequencing of the human genome, the term "junk dna" has slowly been debunked. All DNA is useful until such time as it is not. The processes underlying life are stochastic, and the systems that persist are the ones that can successfully function with the underlying molecular components.
There are several diseases that are caused by "bad timing" of non-functional DNA...
Now, I suppose I should read the study and see what new features on the vast landscape of biology have been discovered...
(Score: 2, Interesting) by anubi on Monday November 17 2014, @02:10AM
I get the very strong idea that some of the DNA codes into construction of proteins.
And the "junk" DNA is data. What to do with those proteins. How many to make. Where they go. When to make them.. etc.
I see stripping the "junk DNA" out of my code would be akin to me taking a computer program, running it through a disassembler, keeping only the program bytes, trash the rest, then recompile it.
I betcha it won't work.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 17 2014, @06:47PM
I wouldn't trust classification of my sock drawer to an orginisation that gets ENCODE out of "Encyclopedia of DNA Elements".