Reanimated ‘Junk’ DNA Is Found to Cause Disease

[alp227]

Source: The New York Times

The human genome is riddled with dead genes, fossils of a sort, dating back hundreds of thousands of years — the genome’s equivalent of an attic full of broken and useless junk.

Some of those genes, surprised geneticists reported Thursday, can rise from the dead like zombies, waking up to cause one of the most common forms of muscular dystrophy. This is the first time, geneticists say, that they have seen a dead gene come back to life and cause a disease.

“If we were thinking of a collection of the genome’s greatest hits, this would go on the list,” said Dr. Francis Collins, a human geneticist and director of the National Institutes of Health.

The disease, facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy, known as FSHD, is one of the most common forms of muscular dystrophy. It was known to be inherited in a simple pattern. But before this paper, published online Thursday in Science by a group of researchers, its cause was poorly understood.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/20/science/20gene.html

[aquart]

1. Can they go in and turn off the switch?

[KakistocracyHater]

3. will evangelical Christians allow it?

IF you are Red Letter Christians-this does not apply to you; notice the evangelical part.

[pgodbold]

7. Is a Red Letter Christian a believer in only the red text in the Bible?

[KakistocracyHater]

19. they haven't edited out of their faith what Jesus said, unlike Old Testament

Christians, who have.

[quakerboy]

14. Will those in our own midst

who are strongly anti-genetic manipulation allow it?

[aquart]

16. I wasn't looking for rhetorical irrelevances.

[greiner3]

4. Not at all that simple.

Probably impossible. Most of the human DNA is junk. Then there are transposons. These bits of protein can jump from one part of the genome to another. They can turn on and off, insert themselves into a normal gene causing catastophic consequences. There are more crazy things in the genome and it will take many generations to understand a tiny bit of it.

But the transposons do this by causing mutations. Good, bad or indifferent, these bits are real and can be tracked. However, the fundies have nothing to fear. Their transposons do not make mutations. That would be against some words in some dusty book. They get cancers and horrible diseases because they don't have enough belief in their god and it's punishing them.

[Xipe Totec]

2. One man's junk is another man's treasure

Some of these archaic genes encode survival strategies for threats that occur very infrequently, like bubonic plague, or climate change...

Sure we could turn them off...

Just because somebody decide to call them junk DNA does not make it so.

There is a specific genetic defect that atrophied the human mandibular muscles. This weakening of the muscle is what enabled us to grow the cranial dome to accommodate a larger brain. Without this 'defect' there would be no human intelligence.

http://www.bioedonline.org/news/news.cfm?art=887

[AlbertCat]

8. Just because somebody decide to call them junk DNA does not make it so.

Uh.... I thought because they were turned off and no longer of use was the point.

[friedgreentomatoes]

10. Junk=basically means "do not give rise to functional protein"

However, even though the majority of our genome is "non-protein coding", scientists have long wondered as to why would a cell maintain them. Eventually, many such kinds of junk DNA have been attributed with functions and the category "junk" is shrinking.

[Bitwit1234]

5. Hey just a sarcastic thought about Aliens

a lot of people say we were the product of an experiment by Aliens to populate this planet. How about this. We all have useless dead genes. In this experiment by the Aliens they are "waking" up these genes to see the effect on us the residents of earth.

Do you think Glen Beck might pick this up. Remember you heard it here first.

[catzies]

17. There's a screenplay in there somewhere....I see Jeff Goldblum as the sarcastic scientist...

Box office gold! :rofl:

[NBachers]

6. I prefer the term "Zombie Genes" myself

[Rage for Order]

9. Reanimated DNA? Like the Reanimator?

[flamingdem]

15. Now that was an example of excellent cinema! nt

[Lightning Count]

11. Why are they even working on GMO humans?

Frankenhumans. :)

[Duer 157099]

12. I wonder what would happen if they pared away all the "junk"

It could be an interesting result. Although you have to ask why Nature would continue to expend the energy necessary to carry around all that excess baggage unless it actually *was* useful in some way. Or is Mother Nature actually a Hoarder? :shrug:

[Dogmudgeon]

13. Old news -- new research

It appears that a lot of our DNA is from pathogen viruses, many of them pre-dating genus Homo.

--d!

[Taverner]

18. Interesting - just like junk or 'dead' code in an application

One of the many sources of bugs in a computer program or application