Junk DNA is strongly conserved...
Nov. 10th, 2004 09:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
swestrupAccording to an article in Nature (Subscription required)
That was written before the recent discovery that a mouse with all 'junk' DNA removed is completely normal and healthy, as far as the scientists could determine. This would appear to be a bit of a paradox, as only necessary gene sequences should be strongly conserved. As I mentioned in that post, one theory of junk DNA (for which I wish I had a pointer) is that it serves as a regulatory mechanism for the rate-of-change due to mutation. How that gets to be so tightly conserved is an interesting question though, as I can't grasp how it happens. More thought it clearly required.
University of California, Santa Cruz, researchers have found more than 480 "ultraconserved" regions of "junk" DNA that are completely identical across the man, mouse and rat species implying that they are essential to the descendants of these organisms. The regions largely match up with chicken, dog and fish sequences too.
The most likely scenario is that they control the activity of indispensable genes. The sequences may help slice and splice RNA into different forms and control embryo growth.
That was written before the recent discovery that a mouse with all 'junk' DNA removed is completely normal and healthy, as far as the scientists could determine. This would appear to be a bit of a paradox, as only necessary gene sequences should be strongly conserved. As I mentioned in that post, one theory of junk DNA (for which I wish I had a pointer) is that it serves as a regulatory mechanism for the rate-of-change due to mutation. How that gets to be so tightly conserved is an interesting question though, as I can't grasp how it happens. More thought it clearly required.
