The New York Times article goes into detail about a heated debate of whether or not our Human DNA is junk or not. Although valid points are made from both sides, throughout the article there was a tendency where scientists agreed at some degree that some of the non-coding DNA is junk. Some of the views that the article focuses on are aligned in broad spectra of agreement whether or not most of our DNA is complete garbage. Scientists like Ryan Gregory agreed that complexity of an organism is irrelevant to its genome, because most of DNA (about 98.8 percent) is noncoding DNA, where most of it does nothing for humans but just takes up space. Other scientists refute the idea that noncoding DNA is not important and they alluded to the fact that a lot of noncoding DNA is essential to our survival and development. Many scientists like Francis Collins believe that the genome of people will turn out to be more active than we ever imagined.
The article then goes back in time and talks about the importance of new discoveries like …show more content…
In the beginning, even before I read the article I was opinionated and thought that yes, almost all of our DNA is junk. This conclusion can allude to my genetics course which also instilled this theory in my head. Nevertheless, after reading about different research and studies I am not as strongly biased anymore. I still believe that a majority of our genome does not do anything, but also some of the non-coding regions are as important for development and survival as the coding regions are. The RNA molecules from the Rinn experiment made me change my mind about why this “junk DNA” is important. I really liked the explanation that Rin gave about “genomic origami.” He mentioned how in every cell you have the same genome (piece of paper) but depending on how you fold it you can make a hat or a plane out of the same piece of
The article then goes back in time and talks about the importance of new discoveries like …show more content…
In the beginning, even before I read the article I was opinionated and thought that yes, almost all of our DNA is junk. This conclusion can allude to my genetics course which also instilled this theory in my head. Nevertheless, after reading about different research and studies I am not as strongly biased anymore. I still believe that a majority of our genome does not do anything, but also some of the non-coding regions are as important for development and survival as the coding regions are. The RNA molecules from the Rinn experiment made me change my mind about why this “junk DNA” is important. I really liked the explanation that Rin gave about “genomic origami.” He mentioned how in every cell you have the same genome (piece of paper) but depending on how you fold it you can make a hat or a plane out of the same piece of