Seeing as we have no "Theory of Evolution" to reference, I think strict predictions are out of the question. However, we may readily enough survey expectations. Evolutionists have historically expected simplicity at the cellular level, and they continue to do so. Even to this day many of them routinely dismiss the majority of DNA as "junk" and employ their familiar argument-from-ignorance in support of the assumption.
Creationists, on the other hand, have not been difficult to read. Creationism expects complexity and wonders.
What is found?
"Intricate Toiling" Washington Post Article, 2007 The first concerted effort to understand all the inner workings of the DNA molecule is overturning a host of long-held assumptions about the nature of genes and their role in human health and evolution, scientists reported yesterday.
The new perspective reveals DNA to be not just a string of biological code but a dauntingly complex operating system that processes many more kinds of information than previously appreciated.
Mmm hmm...
Overturning assumptions, long-held assumptions at that. What manner of science proceeds from assumption in the first place?
An operating system? Oh that's gotta hurt. ...Well, for those who care and know what an operating system is. Sure puts the smackdown on the "DNA isn't a code - that's just a weak analogy" crowd.
The findings, from a project involving hundreds of scientists in 11 countries and detailed in 29 papers being published today, confirm growing suspicions that the stretches of "junk DNA" flanking hardworking genes are not junk at all. But the study goes further, indicating for the first time that the vast majority of the 3 billion "letters" of the human genetic code are busily toiling at an array of previously invisible tasks.
Oh somebody stop 'em! Don't be intimidated, peer-reviewers, do your job and protect the paradigm. Hurry hurry hurry!
The new work also overturns the conventional notion that genes are discrete packets of information arranged like beads on a thread of DNA. Instead, many genes overlap one another and share stretches of molecular code. As with phone lines that carry many voices at once, that arrangement has prompted the evolution of complex switching, splicing and silencing mechanisms -- mostly located between genes -- to sort out the interwoven messages.
Poor selection goddess. Imagine how confused she must be! First she was tasked with selecting unfit individuals; then populations; then genes. Now this! What's the hag to do?
The new picture of the inner workings of DNA probably will require some rethinking in the search for genetic patterns that dispose people to diseases such as diabetes, cancer and heart disease, the scientists said, but ultimately the findings are likely to speed the development of ways to prevent and treat a variety of illnesses.
...
Complicating the picture, it turns out that genes and the DNA sequences that regulate their activity are often far apart along the six-foot-long strands of DNA intricately packaged inside each cell. How they communicate is still largely a mystery.
Ah-ha! Well, so long as there's a mystery; so long as anything's unknown, they'll cling to their evolution-of-the-gaps stories. I'm waiting to see how they fill this one in with some "evolution did it" twists.
Altogether, the new project shows that the simple sequence of DNA letters revealed to great fanfare by the $3 billion Human Genome Project in 2003 was but a skeletal version of the human construction manual. It is the alphabet, but not much more, for a syntactically complicated language of life that scientists are just now beginning to learn.
That was 2007. Although the learning process is still just barely beginning, it is beginning.
Science Daily, May 2010In a paper published on May 6 in the journal Nature entitled "Deciphering the Splicing Code," a research team led by Professors Brendan Frey and Benjamin Blencowe of the University of Toronto describes how a hidden code within DNA explains one of the central mysteries of genetic research -- namely how a limited number of human genes can produce a vastly greater number of genetic messages. The discovery bridges a decade-old gap between our understanding of the genome and the activity of complex processes within cells, and could one day help predict or prevent diseases such as cancers and neurodegenerative disorders.
Somebody's not too keen on design, and it shows. How can my telephone produce so many different sounds with only one type of speaker?
When the human genome was fully sequenced in 2004, approximately 20,000 genes were found. However, it was discovered that living cells use those genes to generate a much richer and more dynamic source of instructions, consisting of hundreds of thousands of genetic messages that direct most cellular activities. Frey, who has appointments in Engineering and Medicine, likens this discovery to "hearing a full orchestra playing behind a locked door, and then when you pry the door open, you discover only three or four musicians generating all that music."
Enough with the poor analogy. What's new?
To figure out how living cells generate vast diversity in their genetic information, Frey and postdoctoral fellow Yoseph Barash developed a new computer-assisted biological analysis method that finds 'codewords' hidden within the genome that constitute what is referred to as a 'splicing code'. This code contains the biological rules that are used to govern how separate parts of a genetic message copied from a gene can be spliced together in different ways to produce different genetic messages (messenger RNAs). "For example, three neurexin genes can generate over 3,000 genetic messages that help control the wiring of the brain," says Frey.
Kinda like
words? We only use a few hundred words in typical, everyday speech. Words composed of letters. Words strung together to mean - oh! Meaning! That's the hangup. Meaningful information requires an intelligent source. No wonder we don't see the best analogy.
I like this work, but reportingwise, they did better a while back on a related issue.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071114151513.htm"It's clear that humans are very different from chimpanzees on several levels, but we wanted to find out if it could be the splicing process that accounts for some of these fundamental differences," says Blencowe, a professor with the Banting and Best Department of Medical Research and Department of Molecular Genetics.
"The surprising thing we found was that six to eight per cent of the alternative splicing events we looked at were showing differences, which is quite significant. And those genes that showed differences in splicing are associated with a range of important processes, including susceptibility to certain diseases."
So the vocabulary used by the human DNA differs significantly from the vocabulary used by the chimp DNA, in other words.
This research is good stuff - at least from my perspective. I do wish they'd give up their cherished assumptions. It'd make things easier to understand. I suspect when they work, they employ better analogies than when they publish.
On the bright side, I see a few indications that some are willing to give up cherished assumptions when reality is staring them directly in the face.
...Well, provided they see a way to twist things enough to maintain their most sacred assumption, that is. You know, the one they cannot question without "committing professional suicide". 'Member that one?
