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dos0mething t1_ish6mhh wrote

this is a buzzword, plain and simple. It takes one nucleotide switch to go from perfectly healthy to sickle cell disease. The vast majority of genetic information is nonsense on purpose. if every line of genetic code mattered, any genetic insult would result in catastrophic change.

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Ok_Common_1700 t1_ishcp2h wrote

99% of our DNA is noncoding (does not contain information for the production of proteins), but that doesn't mean it is junk. It may well be involved in the control of gene activity.

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dos0mething t1_iskdr37 wrote

I didn't say all, i said vast majority. I am well aware that there are epigenetic factors indirectly related to gene expression. What I'm saying is there is a quality over quantity argument in which a change in the right spot is what matters, not a raw number which is what is touted in these buzzword

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[deleted] t1_ish952z wrote

[removed]

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jethomas5 t1_ishnaya wrote

A fraction of DNA is there to aid in folding and orderly structure. That DNA has generally the same sequence, but it can get duplications and such without causing much trouble, and that does happen. That DNA is important, but it pretty clearly isn't coding for anything.

A lot of the rest is unclear. We COULD collect a lot of junk that caused no problems. It could just collect and do nothing. Useless fragments of ancient viruses etc. That's plausible. Or the same DNA could be somehow important. We might have libraries of inactivated viruses so we can recognize them if they show up again. There are lots and lots of possibilities.

The next 50 years are sure to give us a lot of exciting discoveries if climate change doesn't stop us. (Or nuclear war. That would be sad, to knock ourselves down entirely due to our own inability to solve problems.)

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CanadianJogger t1_isietuw wrote

>any genetic insult would result in catastrophic change.

That's nonsense. Every cell has its own DNA. After the zygote and blastocyte phases, genetic redundancy increasingly wards against catastrophe.

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dos0mething t1_iskdz8j wrote

Don't think you read clearly what I wrote. I said if there was no genetic redundancy or large swaths of intronic regions, any genetic insult would result in catastrophe.

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