Dna

[mrakins]

Mogurnda--my apologies for not being clearer in my earlier post. I should have said that "no self-respecting biologist thinks that ALL junk DNA is junk." I was mostly responding to Joe's posts with that one. Also, I might argue that DNA that serves a structural role unrelated to it's primary sequence isn't really junk, but we're getting pretty far into semantics at that point.

Here's the link to the Nature article...
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v435/n7044/abs/nature03663.html

Also, here's an excerpt from the accompanying News & Views...
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v435/n7044/full/435890a.html

Barbara McClintock won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1983 for predicting the existence of mobile elements, pieces of DNA that move from one place in the genome to another. McClintock called them 'controlling elements' and proposed that they could account for developmental differences among individuals of a species — explaining, for example, the differences in maize-kernel colour that she observed1. Although her ideas were not well received at the time, they have proven to be remarkably prescient. On page 903 of this issue, Muotri et al.2 provide evidence that mammalian mobile elements may have a role in creating "the uniqueness of individuals within a population".
...
Time and further research will determine whether McClintock's hypothesis that mobile elements have a significant role in an organism's development can be extended from maize to humans, and specifically to the function of human neurons.

 

[mogurnda]

Thanks. I tend to read these things during lunch, and forget where I read them.

In the world of flies, where I spend my waking hours, naturally-occurring transposons are normally associated with loss of gene function. It is really interesting how this can be turned around and used to generate cellular diversity.

If you don't mind me asking, what do you do?

 

[mrakins]

Thanks. I tend to read these things during lunch, and forget where I read them.

In the world of flies, where I spend my waking hours, naturally-occurring transposons are normally associated with loss of gene function. It is really interesting how this can be turned around and used to generate cellular diversity.

If you don't mind me asking, what do you do?

I study development of the nervous system in rodents--particularly how synapses form. Trust me, I wouldn't have expected a benefit to transposons either--particularly not what they found. (or at least, what could be implied by what they found)

 

[slipknottin]

Everything Slip. It's the evidence of intelligent design vs the appearance of accidental mutation.

Thats not at all what the original topic was about though. The original post merely stated that scientists had not yet figured out what all the different DNA does. Not that the DNA was a function of intelligent design or random mutation.

 

[125gJoe]

DNA mistake:

 

[cgrabe]

DNA mistake:

Mistake? Looks pretty sweet to me.

 

[125gJoe]

Mistake? Looks pretty sweet to me.

:thud:

 

[pophead]

this is way random and off topic- but pophead are you doing ancient Greek or modern?

ancient. my youth pastor is tutering me.

 

[ash]

That's what I did too- once you get into it a bit and have a feel for the language it's actually pretty cool. Homer is a fun challenge, but translations like ***les are so close to the actual Greek that it takes some of the fun out of it. The less translated stuff like Lucian was probably my favorite. And Plato- dear God - just read the translations. It's interesting, but he manages to make what is ordinarily a very nimble language cumbersome to say the least. You really do have to keep up with it if you really want to learn it though- it's been a few years since I have studied it and all I know now is what I would call Jeopardy Greek. If hoi polloi comes up as a clue I know what it is but that's about the extent of my retained knowledge.

 

[pophead]

ahh! I'm not too far into studying Greek. so I don't know some of the stuff your saying. :huh: I'll have to go study some more! :read: