Junk DNA

Glenn Morton (grmorton@waymark.net)
Mon, 22 Dec 1997 23:59:58 -0600

At 03:35 PM 12/22/97 -0700, John W. Burgeson wrote:
>Glenn said:
>"Obviously if one complex organism doesn't need the stuff, then it can't
>have
>a very important function. So why would God create orgainisms with this
>much useless "design"?"
>
>Thios argument would be more convincing if it were possible to remove all
>the "junk DNA" from an existing group of organisms and see how that
>group, and a control group with the "junk DNA" present, survived several
>generations. The experimenter would not even have to remove "all" the
>"junk DNA" -- just a more-or-less significant amount.
>

Why is a natural experiment not convincing. The fish doesn't have most of
the junk. And besides when you consider that these sequences consist of
long strings of ATATATATATAT etc or things like it, there if very little
information in these strings. It is like trying to communicate with one
two-letter word. What do I mean when I say, "is, is, is, is, is, is," There
simply is no information there to be extracted. About the only purpose that
things like this can be put to is a timing counter and the fish didn't need
90% of the ones his comrades have.

>Hypothesis: "Junk DNA" is not essential for a certain species.
>
>Experiment: Take an established colony of grunks, where "grunk" is some
>species.
>
>Randomly separate the colony into two equal populations. Call them A and
>B.
>
>Remove 50% or more of the "junk DNA" from each member of A.
>
>Allow A to survive untouched by B.
>Allow B to survive untouched by A.
>
>Repeat for 100 generations.
>
>Compare A to B.
>
>If no perceptible differences, the hypothesis seems to be confirmed.
>If there are differences, disconfirmed.
>
>Seems easy enough! But then, I'm not a biologist. How close are we to
>being able to do such an experiment?

we can't be that far.

glenn

Adam, Apes, and Anthropology: Finding the Soul of Fossil Man

and

Foundation, Fall and Flood
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm