this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2024
117 points (81.3% liked)

science

15020 readers
526 users here now

A community to post scientific articles, news, and civil discussion.

rule #1: be kind

<--- rules currently under construction, see current pinned post.

2024-11-11

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Review of 2023 book: How Life Works: A User’s Guide to the New Biology Philip Ball. ISBN9781529095999

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] stoneparchment@possumpat.io 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

This is a funny comment though, because "junk" DNA is involved with epigenetic regulation and cellular behavior.

"It's there so it must have function", "it's still in the genetic code so it must have been selected for" is the least nuanced take,

"It's there just randomly and therefore is junk", and "evolution does not select for efficiency" is an improvement,

But "it's there and it's doing something despite not having a bespoke, prescribed function" and "evolution is a cascade of emergent effects and random chance, none of our genome is non-functional even though it is random" is the most up to date take

You seem like a biologist, why not go read some of these papers? Like the one I linked by Dan Nichols? Most people don't have the background necessary to understand the language (no shade) but you seem to!