Posted: Dec 27, 2019 2:05 am
Wortfish wrote:More junk science from an ignorant "science author" in Nature: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03061-xAlthough de novo genes remain enigmatic, their existence makes one thing clear: evolution can readily make something from nothing
I wasn't aware that non-coding DNA sequences, the majority of which may be functional and implicated in disease, are "nothing".
Even you can't be that dumb that you think the author thinks non-coding DNA is literally nothing.
Also, DNA doesn't need to be functional to be implicated in disease. Nonfunctional and random DNA, if it is not otherwise kept packaged into nucleosomes and therefore transcriptionally silent, will reliably recruit transcription factors even from noncanonical regions only slightly similar to promoter sequences, and produce RNA transcripts that can interfere with normal cellular processes.
Experiments have revealed that much non-coding DNA is often as little as one single base-substitution away from acquiring similarity high enough to a canonical promoter, to start acting as one.