WorldMag— by Daniel James Devine
Researchers are showing that the old Darwinian ideas about ‘junk’ DNA were simplistic. Welcome to the new genome
Adenine, thymine, guanine, cytosine. Biology teachers repeated those molecules to us in high school. We had to memorize them—although they were already embedded in our brains, literally speaking. Working in tandem, those four bases compose a four-letter code giving instructions to every living cell, ultimately sketching a blueprint for life.
The code, DNA, is microscopically wound in the elegant double helix that James Watson and Francis Crick discovered in 1953. It seemed charmingly simple: Two ribbons of chemical code, weakly attracted to one another, could be unzipped and copied (allowing a cell to divide), or transcribed to RNA, which used the instructions to make proteins. These proteins, like miniature laborers, then flew off to whatever cellular task the DNA had in mind.
Something was odd about this system, though: Out of 3 billion bases, less than 2 percent actually manufactured the proteins making up the human body. The remaining 98 percent were apparently useless—discarded byproducts, some said, of millennia of evolution. Even Francis Crick, in a paper he co-authored in 1980, dismissed much of the genome as “little better than junk.” For scientists to “hunt obsessively” for the beneficial function of such DNA, Crick argued, would be “folly.”
Yet hunt they did. And now, 32 years later, they’ve painstakingly ferreted out a discovery revolutionizing our understanding of the genome: At least 80 percent of human DNA—perhaps more—is biochemically active. With the help of new DNA sequencing technology, researchers have identified functions for millions of DNA segments previously dismissed as junk. Their findings, announced on a raft of 30 scientific papers released Sept. 5, reveal a genetic code breathtakingly more complex than we ever imagined, and one that challenges Darwinism.
The papers result from a nine-year project called the “Encyclopedia of DNA Elements,” or ENCODE for short. Following up the Human Genome Project (which published the first draft of human DNA in 2000), ENCODE involved 442 researchers from the United States, United Kingdom, Japan, Spain, and elsewhere. They discovered that supposedly inactive regions of DNA actually contain some 4 million “switches” that turn genes on or off and control how cells behave. What’s more, these genetic switches could be the key to understanding, and perhaps curing, diseases ranging from lupus to Alzheimer’s to autism to diabetes.
For the ENCODE scientists, the task of finding these switches was colossal. They performed 1,649 experiments on 147 types of human cells. They endured 675 teleconference calls between 2008 and this June to discuss their findings. They produced 15 trillion bytes of data—enough to fill 3,200 DVDs. The entire project cost U.S. taxpayers $185 million.
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