Junk DNA

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…

I was first introduced to the Human Genome project in 2000, where my molecular biology professor explained genes as small units of DNA in a sea of genetic gibberish or junk. The concept of “junk DNA”was very intriguing to me that why nature created those billions of nucleotides of DNA inside a cell, organized it and packed it without any purpose? Soon I started following the thoughts of Francis Crick, Nobel laureate and co-discoverer of DNA double-helix, who in the early 1960s professed his…

cross-breed, what keeps some dog pairs, like beagles and Irish setters, from producing pups? Acland says no one knows for sure; they discovered these mismatches by accident while studying genetic diseases, not while studying dog breeding itself , but he states it may have something to do with a kind of DNA called "junk DNA." Junk DNA is a kind of DNA that takes up space in the total amount of genetic information but doesn't serve an obvious function for the organism. The term "junk,"…

Your DNA is relatively free from mutation DNA is constantly replicating itself in your cells to grow, which can lead to some errors in replication and recombination, and is also subject to bombardment from environmental factors everyday (such as UV rays or cigarette smoke, which can damage DNA and lead to cancer.) This leads to more than one quintillion DNA changes in one day, and you’re probably asking how you don’t have superpowers already. DNA mutations can be dangerous, and often cause…

participated, including the UK, Canada, Japan, France, and Germany (1). The overall aim of the Human Genome Project was to completely understand and map out every human gene, the genome (2). The other goals of the program were to determine the sequences of the chemical base pairs that create DNA, store the new understanding in databases, improve tools for this data analysis, and address social, ethical and legal implications of the project (1). Overall, the Human Genome Project has helped many…

individuals in the world are identical. This is due to the difference in their genetic constitution. A volume of 3ml of semen contains around 400, 000 sperms and the beauty is that, no two sperms are alike. Irrespective of male of female gender, the surprising fact that no two gametes produced in an individual are alike, explains the importance of variation for successful continuity of a race. The differ¬ences in genetic make-up of individuals is brought about by variation in the nucleotide…

noncoding DNA sequences Since the completion of Human Genome Project in 2003, it was found that more than 98% of human genome is occupied by noncoding DNA sequences (Genome.gov, 2003), existing between genes and as introns within genes (Figure-1). In genomic, noncoding DNA regions are defined as the sequences of an organism’s DNA, which do not code for proteins. Although it has been known for decades that some of these sequences code for noncoding RNAs that involve in controlling…

Question 1. What were the main findings of the ENCODE project? Only a small percent of the 3.2 Gb human genome encodes for genes but much of the remainder was chalked up a junk. However, the ENCODE project suggests that up to 80% of the genome consist of various active regulatory, and structurally significant regions. Question 2. Define “junk DNA.” Junk DNA plays no active role in influencing an individual organism’s survival or reproduction, i.e. it does not code for or regulate…

One great organism to study is Caenorhabditis elegans (C.elegans ) because it is hermaphrodites, transparents and small enough to observe under the microscope. After adding mutagens to them, scientists can get all kinds of freak worms after few days. “Bag of worms” are one of them. It can not lay eggs so its body occupied with dozens of eggs. When eggs hatched inside the worm, larvae eat the mother worm and them come out. Ambros, a scientists who just finished doctor degree at MIT, first…

because of the rapid mutation rate of bacteria, and it is more beneficial for them to mutate quickly to respond to the antibiotics to reproduce and survive. 14. a) Transposons are small pieces of DNA that inserts themselves into another place in the genome. A virus is a small infectious agent that replicates only inside living cells of other organisms. Transposons and viruses use the same replication process. They use a cut and paste process that occurs in mutations sometimes. DNA…