“Junk DNA” Refuted

Source: "Oxford Journal: 'The Days of ‘Junk DNA’ Are Over' ,” Evolution News and Science Today, 6 October 2021.

Source: Casey McGarth, “‘Junk DNA’ No More: Repetitive Elements as Vital Sources of Flatworm Variation,” Genome Biology & Evolution, Oxford University Press, October 2021.

Genome Biology & Evolution, published by Oxford University Press, stated in an article "The days of junk DNA are over."

"When we studied genetics at university in the 1980s, the common doctrine was that the non-protein coding parts of eukaryotic genomes consisted of interspersed, ‘useless’ sequences, often organized in repetitive elements like satellite DNA,” note Grunau and Grevelding. Since then, however, the common understanding of such sequences has fundamentally changed, revealing a plethora of regulatory sequences, noncoding RNAs, and sequences that play a role in chromosomal and nuclear structure." [McGarth, quoting Christoph Grunau and Christoph Grevelding].

"Since project ENCODE provoked outrage among evolutionary biologists such as Dan Graur over a decade ago, there has been a concerted campaign to defend the notion of junk DNA, often explicitly in the context of anti-intelligent design sentiments. Graur, at the University of Houston, famously argued in 2013, in a major speech in Chicago to the SMBE, that “if ENCODE is right, then evolution is wrong.” " [Evolution News].

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