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Are we completely sure about that? In my mind it could just be that we don't understand it well enough yet. I mean, junk to us maybe. Nature tends to produce pr

by codr7 2y ago

Are we completely sure about that? In my mind it could just be that we don't understand it well enough yet. I mean, junk to us maybe. Nature tends to produce pretty optimal designs from my experience.

jostmey 2y ago
Nature tends to select things that are just good enough. If nature was optimal, we wouldn't have appendices that need removal, a backward retina, or spines optimized for horizontal placement. Junk DNA can be vestigial. It had a purpose. It no longer does. If there's no selective pressure to get ride of it, it will remain, adrift. The belief that because it exists it must have a purpose could be a human bias
- nickpsecurity 2y ago
  “ we wouldn't have appendices that need removal” That they weren’t needed was another myth. They turned out to be helpful at stopping one of the main killers of early humanity: diarrhea. Still kills lots of people in the third world. Appendix helps prevent stomach problems, too. Quite a few people whose were removed figured that out on their own.
- haneul 2y ago
  Any reading on the topic you could point me to? Whenever I head about vestigial DNA, I’m reminded of the preserved wetlands which forced the roads to arc the long way around it. And in so doing, structurally affected traffic despite no cars ever going inside its bounds. I guess what I’m wondering how we can be sure that structure is function but non-coding structure has no function and exerts no selective pressure - isn’t the Golgi apparatus analogously “non-coding”?
- inglor_cz 2y ago
  Could, but it also could be an indicator of "we don't really understand biology yet". Biology is more complicated than maths/physics. Multiple extinction crises that shaped the world are still written into our genome and there can be very subtle adaptations at play. People with certain patterns in their non-coding DNA are at much higher risk of ALS, a terrible disease [0] - it certainly looks that at least this part of DNA plays some role in our organisms. [0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38802183/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38802183/
- codr7 2y ago
  It's just that very often when we judge like that, it later turns out we might have been mistaken. The appendix is a perfect example. I don't know about the spine, is it really? Because the whole system looks very optimized for running upright to me, pretty much a perfect running machine.

by codr7 2y ago

jostmey 2y ago

Nature tends to select things that are just good enough. If nature was optimal, we wouldn't have appendices that need removal, a backward retina, or spines optimized for horizontal placement. Junk DNA can be vestigial. It had a purpose. It no longer does. If there's no selective pressure to get ride of it, it will remain, adrift. The belief that because it exists it must have a purpose could be a human bias

nickpsecurity 2y ago
“ we wouldn't have appendices that need removal” That they weren’t needed was another myth. They turned out to be helpful at stopping one of the main killers of early humanity: diarrhea. Still kills lots of people in the third world. Appendix helps prevent stomach problems, too. Quite a few people whose were removed figured that out on their own.
haneul 2y ago
Any reading on the topic you could point me to? Whenever I head about vestigial DNA, I’m reminded of the preserved wetlands which forced the roads to arc the long way around it. And in so doing, structurally affected traffic despite no cars ever going inside its bounds. I guess what I’m wondering how we can be sure that structure is function but non-coding structure has no function and exerts no selective pressure - isn’t the Golgi apparatus analogously “non-coding”?
inglor_cz 2y ago
Could, but it also could be an indicator of "we don't really understand biology yet". Biology is more complicated than maths/physics. Multiple extinction crises that shaped the world are still written into our genome and there can be very subtle adaptations at play. People with certain patterns in their non-coding DNA are at much higher risk of ALS, a terrible disease [0] - it certainly looks that at least this part of DNA plays some role in our organisms. [0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38802183/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38802183/
codr7 2y ago
It's just that very often when we judge like that, it later turns out we might have been mistaken. The appendix is a perfect example. I don't know about the spine, is it really? Because the whole system looks very optimized for running upright to me, pretty much a perfect running machine.