Perhaps you will remember several years ago a lot of talk about "junk DNA." At that time it was common to hear that a large part of human DNA was simply worthless genetic material which had been accumulated over a long evolutionary process.
When scientists first analyzed DNA, they discovered it was composed of both protein coding sequences (genes) and non-protein coding sequences (introns). The long non-protein coding information sequences called introns exist both between genes and within genes.
As far as scientists knew, only the genes were of any value. Since genes make up about only 2% of our DNA, what this meant for human DNA was that 98% of our DNA was considered to be junk.
Because introns did not produce proteins, they "'were immediately assumed to be evolutionary junk.' That assumption was too hasty. 'Increasingly we are realizing that there is a large collection of 'genes' that are clearly functional even though they do not code any protein' but produce only RNA."(1) Or as Gibbs' subsequent article puts it, "Science had dismissed such DNA as the useless detritus of evolution, because no proteins are made form it. But it turns out that these unconventional genes do give rise to active RNAs, through which they profoundly alter the behavior of normal genes."(2)
In the words of Gibb's article in November's issue of Scientific American, "'What was damned as junk because it was not understood may, in fact, turn out to be the very basis of human complexity.' ... there is good reason to suspect that is true."(2) The article also admits, "The failure to recognize the importance of introns 'may well go down as one of the biggest mistakes in the history of molecular biology.'"(3)
Why have scientists overlooked the non-protein coding information sequences? "For decades, pseudogenes have been written off as molecular fossils, the remains of genes that were broken by mutation and abandoned by evolution."(4) The article goes on to point out that in mice one of these pseudogenes "controls the expression of the 'real' gene ... even though the two lie on different chromosomes. There is nothing pseudo about that."(5)
What is the result of this new understanding of the genome?
"The new view of the genomic machine is energizing, .... Those 30,000-odd protein-coding genes, so important yet so immutable, are not the only instruction set to which cells refer. Noncoding DNA matters. Chemical attachments to DNA and to the histones matter. The shape of chromatin matters. ... 'There is a whole new universe out there that we have been blind to,' Bestor says. 'It is very exciting.'"(7)
For those of us who understand that life is the creative handiwork of God, these recent discoveries are not surprising. It is exactly what we would expect to be true. We would not expect to find mountains of evolutionary junk stashed in our genome.
Barry Newton, Copyright © 2003 Revised 2006
Endnotes
1 W. Wayt Gibbs, "The Unseen Genome," Scientific American (November 2003): 49.
2 W. Wayt Gibbs, "The Unseen Genome: Beyond DNA," Scientific American (December 2003):108
3 Gibbs, November 2003. p. 53.
4 Ibid. p. 50
5 Ibid. p. 50
6 Ibid. p.50
7 Gibbs, December 2003, p. 113.
Additional Observations Which Can Be Drawn:
Evolutionists have often claimed that the story of creation will stop the pursuit of knowledge in science. I disagree. If the mind of God has created this universe, then there is the expectation that functionalality and predictability are built into the very fabric of it all. Ironically, it is the story of evolution which has stalled the advance of knowledge in microbiology for decades!
In recent years, the media has been aflood with the news that science has revealed the human genome is filled with evolutionary junk. These ignorant and faulty evolutionistic conclusions were drawn based upon the incorrect assumption that introns were worthless DNA. This is simply the most recent chapter illustrating human ignorance being exposed after the public was indoctrinated with misinformation that supposedly supported an evolutionary framework. In other words, if accurate knowledge had been known about our human genome, misleading statements about evolutionary junk DNA which were viewed as undermining the creation account could never have been made.
Other Articles Which May Be of Interest:
The Origin of Life According to Evolution