2018/12/31

Without junk-DNA evolution will become a destructive process

Modern Science has discovered that 100% of our genome is useful and meaningful. The junk-DNA theory is dead.

Here's some examples of thoughts that tell us a lot about what evolution believers think about junk-DNA and mutational load.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/the-curious-wavefunction/three-reasons-to-like-junk-dna/

Excerpt: "The third reason for accepting the reality of junk DNA is to simply think about mutational load. Our genomes, as of other organisms, have undergone lots of mutations during evolution. What would be the consequences if 90% of our genome were really functional and had undergone mutations? How would we have survived and flourished with such a high mutation rate? On the other hand, it's much simpler to understand our survival if we assume that most mutations that happen in our genome happen in junk DNA."


https://bigthink.com/paul-ratner/75-of-the-human-genome-is-junk-dna-claims-new-research

Excerpt: "Dan Graur, professor of biology and biochemistry, calculated that about 10 to 15 percent of the genome is actually functional, with the upper limit of 25 percent.
 
His reasoning stems from looking at how mutations affect a population’s DNA. Graur’s mathematical model allowed him to calculate the “mutational load” - the total genetic load of a population that results from the accumulation of bad or deleterious mutations. At some point the load can become too much and the population would go extinct."


Excerpt: "The estimated mutation rate in protein-coding genes suggested that only up to ∼20% of the nucleotides in the human genome can be selectively maintained, as the mutational burden would be otherwise too large."


https://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2009/11/genetic-load-neutral-theory-and-junk.html

Excerpt: "Because a large percentage of gene mutations are neutral, and because most of our genome is junk, we can easily tolerate 130 mutations per individual per generation without going extinct."


https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4014423/

Excerpt: "Currently, the rate of mutation in humans is estimated to be anywhere from 70–150 mutations per generation. By this line of reasoning, we would estimate that, at most, only 1% of the nucleotides in the genome are essential for viability in a strict sequence-specific way. However, more recent computational models have demonstrated that genomes could sustain multiple slightly deleterious mutations per generation. Using statistical methods, it has been estimated that humans sustain 2.1–10 deleterious mutations per generation. These data would suggest that at most 10% of the human genome exhibits detectable organism-level function and conversely that at least 90% of the genome consists of junk DNA."


https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2018/03/09/are-humans-genetically-loaded-for-extinction/

Excerpt: "We’ve also more than tripled in size as a group during that time. And all these issues are important in determining if, on an evolutionary scale, we’re in deep doo-doo.

Minnesota biologist PZ Myers doesn’t think it’s so bad. He points out that the number of genes an organism has is also important for determining genetic load. Which makes sense: several hundred mutations in a genome of 100,000 are far less than the same number in a genome of 20,000. And, according to his calculations, our genome (of about 20,000) is at the upper end of genes we can possibly carry with us. “We can’t have significantly more, or the likelihood of genes breaking down with our current mutation rate would mean that most of our children would be born dead of lethal genetic errors, or the burden of a swarm of small deficits to their fitness,” he wrote."

So, what does modern science say about useless DNA?

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/269187480_Non-coding_RNAs_Biological_functions_and_applications?fbclid=IwAR2RYi1Zw99F_-87r8sj0Q3z1FqHJQ19dCBHZUwDbSx2jaV4GPsBLO4ThRY

Excerpt: "Analyses of the international human genome sequencing results in 2004 converged to a consensual number of ~20 000 protein-coding genes, spanning over <2% of the total genomic sequence. Therefore, the developmental and physiological complexity of human beings remains unaccounted if viewed only in terms of the number of protein-coding genes; the epigenetic influences involving chromatin remodelling and RNA interference and alternative precursor messenger RNA splicing of functional protein-coding transcripts as well as post-translational modifications of proteins increase the diversity and the functionality of the proteome and likely explain the increased complexity. In addition, there has been an explosion of research addressing possible functional roles for the other 98% of the human genome that does not encode proteins. In fact, >90% of the human genome is likely to be transcribed yielding a complex network of overlapping transcripts that include tens of thousands of long RNAs with little or no protein forming capacity; they are collectively called non-coding RNA. This review highlights the fundamental concepts of biological roles of non-coding RNA and their importance in regulation of cellular physiology under disease conditions like cancer."

My comment: So, it's obvious that without a living junk-DNA theory, evolution will become a destructive process. And this is exactly what we are observing to occur in the wild and in the human genome. Evolution has never happened. Any change in organisms has been due to epigenetic regulation of pre-existing biological information OR corruption of information.