Rumraket
Active Member
There are several errors in your reasoning here, but I can understand why you are confused. I see that your source makes several errors that you are now repeating, so I guess you can't really be faulted for it. But regardless, they are errors on the part the people who write these articles and they have simply not got the terms and the history behind them right.Rhed said:Rhed said:Yes, yes, It would be 98% after you remove 97% of the DNA and ignore the insertions and deletions of bp.
he_who_is_nobody said::facepalm:
Citation for your claim.
Honestly, is this how it will be with you? Are you just going to ignore the vast majority of what I write and make unsubstantiated claims in every post?
97% of the three billion letters of the Human Genome is described as ‘junk DNA’; only 3% of our DNA appears to code for proteins
http://www.thehumangenome.co.uk/THE_HUMAN_GENOME/Junk_DNA.html
In 2014, now it's "People Use Just 8.2% of Their DNA, Study Finds"
The results are higher than previous estimates of 3 to 5 percent, and significantly lower than the 80 percent reported in 2012 by the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements Project (ENCODE), a public research project led by the U.S. National Human Genome Research Institute to study the role of the 3 billion total letters in human DNA
http://www.livescience.com/46986-human-genome-junk-dna.html
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1. Non protein coding DNA isn't throught to be and indeed never were thought to be junk-DNA, merely because it doesn't code for proteins. The case for junk-DNA was never about coding regions, it was about genome size variations (the C-value paradox) and purifying selection.
2. Non protein coding DNA (whether junk or not) isn't ignored in comparative genetics. Even bona-fide junk regions are useful in comparative genetics, because (AFAIK) neutrally evolving DNA is useful for molecular clock estimates, among other things. Recently it has also been discovered that some junk-regions are useful for detecting genetic homologous regions for ORFan protein coding genes between species (making them, in some sense, non-ORFans).
3. There is a serious conflict between the first and second quote you give (which I guess is what you try to exploit) because, strictly speaking it is true that only about 3% of our DNA codes for proteins, but there are an additional 5-7% that are clearly functional regulatory regions of various sorts (areas where transcription factors bind, origin of replication regions and so on). These are all non-coding regions but are functional and were always known to be functional, they were never dismissed as junk simply because they weren't translated into protein.
One of the first fully understood genetic operons (and now famous for that reason) is the Lac-Operon in bacteria. Right from the beginning it was understood that large portions of the Lac-Operon was non-coding but was still important for regulatory function.
It is a sad state of affairs that there is so much miscommunication on this subject and as such, you can't really be faulted for it. But you have been misinformed about the state of junk-DNA research, the history of the term and it's correct application. In turn, you have several misconceptions about the state and application of comparative genetics.
Also, your first statement is not actually supported by any of your references. Nobody ignores insertions and deletions in similarity estimates.