One of the most common hypotheses that I hear with regard to possible non-coding DNA function is that it serves to protect genes against mutation. Junk DNA, according to this proposal, is there to provide a defensive shield against mutagens (usually this includes UV, ionizing radiation, chemical mutagens, viruses, and/or oxygen radicals). I [...]
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It appears that one of my previous posts was rather confusing for some readers (see this and this, also this for rebuttal). In the post “The Junk DNA myth strikes again (next up: media hype)“, I lamented the painfully cliched tendency for authors to start every paper reporting functions for some small segment of non-coding [...] No paper out yet, and not even any details made available, but this looks interesting: Reduced genome works fine with 2000 chunks missing To put a figure on how much of our DNA is non-essential, Vrijenhoek and his colleagues screened the genomes of 600 healthy students, searching for chunks of DNA at least 10,000 base pairs [...] Just came across this nice video by C0nc0rdance summarizing the work of Susumu Ohno and the original concept of junk DNA. (Oh, and it gets bonus points for using one of my figures!) Here’s the abstract of a paper set to be published in Molecular Biology and Evolution. Now, I think this kind of study is interesting and important. But it’s predictable that they start out with the standard (and historically false) claim that “non-coding DNA was long dismissed as junk” (seriously, do reviewers require authors [...] I sometimes get asked if non-coding elements (usually “junk DNA” is what they say) can ever evolve into genes. I usually say that transposable elements, at least, can be coopted into functional roles, and that it wouldn’t be so odd if a pseudogene took on a novel function sometime through mutations. Kind of [...] I’m not making this officially part of the Quotes of Interest series, but I came across it while reading some papers yesterday and thought it worthy of note. I was just sent a link to this press release. Is this a parody or something? In a year that celebrates the 200th anniversary of the birth of Darwin and the 150th anniversary of the publication of “On the Origin of the Species, Murdoch scientists have made an exciting discovery. [...] It has been quite some time since the last update to the Quotes of interest series on junk DNA. Most of the posts have sought to demonstrate that the exhausting cliché that scientists dismissed possible functions for non-coding DNA until recently is false. Therefore, I have provided many quotes indicating that many (if [...] I noted previously that Scitable, a resource from Nature Education, was interesting but had some problems with the content [Scitable (and a weird piece on DNA barcoding)]. Well, more troubles. Transposable elements (TEs), also known as “jumping genes” or transposons, are sequences of DNA that move (or jump) from [...] |
T. Ryan Gregory 
I am an evolutionary biologist specializing in genome size evolution at the University of Guelph in Canada.
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