It will most likely be some time before these new findings, which are freely available, are put to use in approved therapies. "The pharmaceutical industry has largely given up on the genome," Stamatoyannopoulos said. "And I think this is going to tremendously reinvigorate the utility of the genome." These additional genetic elements, however, are already in use for screening and testing for diseases such as breast cancer, prostate cancer and autoimmune diseases, Richard Myers, president of HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology in Ala., noted in the briefing.
The group has funding to continue their efforts and does not anticipate a slowdown in discoveries going forward. "Our blueprint is remarkably complicated, and we need to be committed for the long haul to understand it," Green said. Compared with the publication of draft human genome 12 years ago—and with initial findings from the ENCODE project published over the past several years—"the questions that we can now ask are more sophisticated," Green said. And hopefully, those better questions will lead to more satisfying and medically useful answers.
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Add CommentIt is great that the theory of Junk DNA has been proven false. Logic tells us that there is a lot more information in the DNA than even this newly uncovered information. Here is a video outlining what has to be in the DNA:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ub9_KEHGr4Q&feature=plcp or look for this on You Tube 02 Information in DNA by theDNAproblem.
The process these scientists are involved in is what is known as reverse engineering in computing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo, there's a lot more to "junk science" than right wing ideologues would have us believe! Excellent! (just kidding, we know conservatives don't know anything about science... and a lot of other things)
Actually, this discovery lends credence to the idea that "nature" holds secrets we're just beginning to notice or understand. It is good though that the idea of "junk DNA" has been found to be a false trail. DNA mapping no longer has a warning equivalent to the "here be dragons" legend said to have been on early maps.
Interesting analogy from NY Times article yesterday:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this“It’s Google Maps,” said Eric Lander, president of the Broad Institute, a joint research endeavor of Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In contrast, the project’s predecessor, the Human Genome Project, which determined the entire sequence of human DNA, “was like getting a picture of Earth from space,” he said. “It doesn’t tell you where the roads are, it doesn’t tell you what traffic is like at what time of the day, it doesn’t tell you where the good restaurants are, or the hospitals or the cities or the rivers.”
The new result “is a stunning resource,” said Dr. Lander, who was not involved in the research that produced it but was a leader in the Human Genome Project. “My head explodes at the amount of data.”
Molecular biology is a wonderfully powerful field. But so many times the results in the past have been described as discovering "magic bullets", little pieces of this or that that act exclusively in the production of complex states. An unfortunate biproduct has been the frequent temptation to jump direct from parts of the protein coding genome to final "hardwired" products that affect entire lifetimes. In retrospect this was clearly bad science, not in terms of the new and powerful factual details uncovered, but in the mistaken assumptions that this was all the was to the story. Current research in epigenetics, of which so-called junk DNA is a major player by turning on and off protein producing genes, has begun to paint a more complex but clearly more relevant picture. There are many fields in biology where experimentally isolated parts of complexly integrated systems have led to a loss of intellectual reality that these isolated parts, in isolation, do not reveal their entire richness. It is good to see that a turn around in such narrow thinking is beginning to give may to more mature conceptualizations - as complex as these may turn out to be.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am encouraged by these findings. Not only for the reasons cited by other commenters (to which I agree), but also because the possibility of being denied insurance coverage due to "faulty DNA" now seems far less likely - for a while at least.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo, we need a new name for "junk dna." How about "proteinic" and "aproteinic" dna, for dna that encodes proteins and dna that doesn't encode proteins, respectively?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOr, we'll just keep calling it junk dna, since that's what everyone is used to. That's how science is done. :-)
Junk DNA isnt the question here. The question is in fact the matter of a patern in all existance. this patern we find in all things.For example we have this groth that occures on a Birch tree that is a virus that eats the trees and kills them then spreding to another tree via air. Only one out of every 10,000 trees gets this CANCERous!!!! infestation!!! Now looking back at the human populous and using the same fractalated therory, as with the trees?????????? The CHAGA KILLS cancer!!! So we look at the mitachondrial DNA???? Welook at the star patern, time of birth andhow healthy or ill the body is at that time. through preasure point theropy and aroma theropy using meditative practices and drinking enough alkaline water to create an environment for cell reconstitution. One must eat plenty of fresh garden herbs that have high Hz levels. While on this regimen one must remember that there is a positive and negative, male and female, right and left, to everything. So to much of one thing can be as bad as to little of another. Balance must be achieved in the rebirth of the individuals lifestyle and the thought process has to equal the amount of energy applied to every day living. Repetition along with self programming initiates cell restructurization. So with a recipe derived from the makeup of one's DNA nano molecules can be produced and injected into the human body as a defense mechanism. Our very own little battle ships fighting disease inside us.One Might ask how can we build somthing so small? I say look at the cog wheel in a wind up watch...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisanswer1: Fuel Oxidation and The Generation of ATP.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisanswer2: Synthesis of DNA.
answer3: Regulation of Gene Expression
answer4: Use of Recombinant DNA Techniques in Medicine.
;)
The concept of "junk" DNA always seemed foolish. Evolution wouldn't keep so much data if it were totally useless. Finally a little light has been shown on the situation.
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