Whats the latest thinking/understanding/theory on junk DNA?”
The more we look at “junk” DNA, the more we realize that it’s not irrelevant. Scientists technically call it “non-coding DNA”, but “junk” is much shorter and well established so few scientists would misunderstand if you used the term and often us it among themselves. The non-coding DNA does play a role, probably more than one. We haven’t entirely deciphered it yet, but here are some of the things we’ve learned: • Less complicated species have less non-coding DNA. Human beings have more non-coding DNA than any other species. • It is conserved, but there is more variation between individuals than in the coding DNA. That suggests that changes in non-coding DNA may have survival consequences, but not absolute ones. • There are some mutations in non-coding DNA that definitely have an effect on the phenotype. • There may be ways for non-coding DNA to be coded after all. That would basically be an extension to the wonderfully simple, but sadly probably too-simple, genetic code. • Some of it i
