A quick follow-up to this point. The exome, or coding region of the DNA is approximately 1% of the genome, so arguably the chances of a mutation randomly occurr

A quick follow-up to this point. The exome, or coding region of the DNA is approximately 1% of the genome, so arguably the chances of a mutation randomly occurring in a coding region are 1/100 as probable as I suggested here. There are a few caveats: 1) The non-coding region appears to be less useless than previously assumed. There are still 'highly preserved' areas in non-coding regions. If a section of the genome is highly preserved, it means that a mutation in that region probably results in death/non-viability of the organism. 2) We know the rate of mutation of the genome. If random mutations were really adding enough base pairs in the telomere region to lengthen it, the genome would be growing at an incredible rate. There are a lot of reasons why it's also implausible, but they have to do with the amount of energy in a bond, etc. and other biochemistry stuff that I'm not qualified to comment on.