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Annoymous I notice - not even adding their names to their deceptions anymore. Anyone up for sending them Grumpybobs post about it and asking them to explain?A non sequitur at the end of this?
http://www.truthinscience.org.uk/tis2/i ... ement.html
cathy wrote:Annoymous I notice - not even adding their names to their deceptions anymore. Anyone up for sending them Grumpybobs post about it and asking them to explain?A non sequitur at the end of this?
http://www.truthinscience.org.uk/tis2/i ... ement.html
A third phase of the ENCODE project is now beginning to further refine exactly what all the “junk” DNA is doing. Ewan Birney stated, “We are the most complex things we know about. It’s not surprising that the manual is huge. I think it’s going to take this century to fill in all the details.”[5] Or will it take longer? Geneticist Rick Myers stated, “We’re far from finished. You might argue that this could go on forever.”[6] Agreed! I couldn’t help but think of the following verses as I read through the ENCODE findings.
For You formed my inward parts;
You covered me in my mother’s womb.
I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
Marvelous are Your works,
And that my soul knows very well. (Psalm 139:13–14)
For more detailed information about the ENCODE findings, I suggest the two following websites:
ENCODE Project
Nature ENCODE
Be sure to come back next Tuesday when I will discuss the negative reactions of many evolutionists to the ENCODE findings.
Keep fighting the good fight of the faith!
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[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6749213.stm.
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/06/scien ... ealth.html.
[3] http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notro ... an-genome/.
The claim that “lots of the genome isn’t junk after all!” is not new — people have been using this straw man for nearly 20 years. What’s novel is that the ENCODE authors are claiming that there is now evidence that 80% of the genome shows signs function, or at least of “specific biological activity”. Many people are not convinced by this, me among them. I am especially unimpressed by this figure when I read the ENCODE project lead’s own words on the subject of “function” and the 80% figure
So, “functional” is a pretty big stretch here, and 80% rather than 20% was used because it generates more interest. Not surprisingly, this has irritated many biologists and thrilled anti-evolutionists
2) To get that 80% figure, you have to have a very loose definition of “function” indeed. Actual evidence (which itself may not convince many experts) suggests 20% is functional in the sense of, well, having a biological function. The 80% value refers only to “specific biological activity”. Some comments from the interwebs sum up the critique of this criterion rather nicely:
Also, there’s this:
These considerations suggest that up to 20% of the genome is actively used and the remaining 80+% is junk. But being junk doesn’t mean it is entirely useless. Common sense suggests that anything that is completely useless would be discarded. There are several possible functions for junk DNA.
That was written by D.E. Comings in 1972, in the very first detailed discussion of “junk DNA”.
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