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What if all that 'junk' DNA is actually the real valuable data and life is just a big self replicating eventually consistent database?

by TrevorJ 11y ago

InclinedPlane 11y ago
Most "junk" DNA is not actually junk. There are several different parts of DNA. The most easily understandable parts are the gene coding bits, we know exactly how that works (in isolation), the DNA gets transcribed to RNA which then gets translated into an amino-acid chain that becomes a protein. If you label everything that's not a protein encoding region of DNA as "junk" then you really don't understand DNA at all. Equally important are the regulation parts of DNA. These are sections of DNA before and after genes which are there to help cells control the expression of different genes. Additionally, there are big chunks of DNA which exist solely to ensure the DNA has the right chemical properties and is easily stored in a cell. There's still plenty of "useless" parts of DNA once you account for all that, but much less "junk" than previously believed.
- TrevorJ 11y ago
  My previous comment was pretty tongue in cheek, but thank you for the explanation, that's really quite interesting. I wonder if it is possible that the 'useless' or 'junk' DNA is mostly stuff that becomes important under different environmental conditions and becomes active based on certain triggers with epigenetics?
- dekhn 11y ago
  I used to agree with you but I think nearly all scientists agree that the long repetitive regions (like LTRs) that compose ~75% of the non-protein-coding genome are actually and truly non-functional garbage that just replicates opportunistically and evolves neutrally. There was a big argument about this a few years ago but ENCODE finally backed off on their public statements about how much of the genome was "functional". Although the experiment would be roughly impossible, you could in principle replace all the LTR regions with random sequence and there would be no positive or negative effect. Note that all of the above may be wrong, but it's really hard to argue that the viral replication stuff in our genome has a functional effect.

What if all that 'junk' DNA is actually the real valuable data and life is just a big self replicating eventually consistent database?

by TrevorJ 11y ago

What if all that 'junk' DNA is actually the real valuable data and life is just a big self replicating eventually consistent database?

InclinedPlane 11y ago

Most "junk" DNA is not actually junk. There are several different parts of DNA. The most easily understandable parts are the gene coding bits, we know exactly how that works (in isolation), the DNA gets transcribed to RNA which then gets translated into an amino-acid chain that becomes a protein. If you label everything that's not a protein encoding region of DNA as "junk" then you really don't understand DNA at all. Equally important are the regulation parts of DNA. These are sections of DNA before and after genes which are there to help cells control the expression of different genes. Additionally, there are big chunks of DNA which exist solely to ensure the DNA has the right chemical properties and is easily stored in a cell. There's still plenty of "useless" parts of DNA once you account for all that, but much less "junk" than previously believed.

TrevorJ 11y ago
My previous comment was pretty tongue in cheek, but thank you for the explanation, that's really quite interesting. I wonder if it is possible that the 'useless' or 'junk' DNA is mostly stuff that becomes important under different environmental conditions and becomes active based on certain triggers with epigenetics?
dekhn 11y ago
I used to agree with you but I think nearly all scientists agree that the long repetitive regions (like LTRs) that compose ~75% of the non-protein-coding genome are actually and truly non-functional garbage that just replicates opportunistically and evolves neutrally. There was a big argument about this a few years ago but ENCODE finally backed off on their public statements about how much of the genome was "functional". Although the experiment would be roughly impossible, you could in principle replace all the LTR regions with random sequence and there would be no positive or negative effect. Note that all of the above may be wrong, but it's really hard to argue that the viral replication stuff in our genome has a functional effect.