John Mattick, University of Queensland, is one of the leading proponents of the idea that much — perhaps most — of the human genome is functional. He has been making claims along these lines for at least 15 years, but seems to always present it as a new idea. Readers of this blog may [...]

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 not [...]

I discussed the early papers involving the discovery of Alu elements in a previous post in the series. Unlike some transposable elements that are capable of autonomous transposition, Alu elements do not encode the requisite enzymes and depend on those of other sequences such as LINE-1 elements. Alu is restricted to primates, and its [...]

I have already made note of some of the coverage of noncoding DNA that appeared in Science during the 1980s, and as a sequel to that earlier installment of the series, I want to talk about the coverage in Nature from the late 1960s and early 1970s. Because SINEs, LINEs, pseudogenes, and introns were [...]

I am hopeful that our exploration of the peer-reviewed scientific literature and related news stories in scientific journals from the 1960s to the 1990s convincingly reveals that those who claim that junk DNA was “long dismissed as irrelevant” have it exactly backwards. Throughout this period, but especially before the non-adaptationist (though not exclusive) alternative [...]