How Creationism Taught Me Real Science 82 Junk DNA

In this episode we examine that old evolutionist stalwart, Junk DNA and how it was shown to have function after all.

References:

Creationist Arguments

Roger and Colette Vendrely's paper

C-Value Paradox

Number of Coding Genes

Selfish DNA

DNA sequencing with chain-terminating inhibitors

Human Genome Project

David Comings' Paper

Susumu Ono's paper

Robert Sinsheimer's letter

And Workshop

Mihaela Pertea & Steven Salzberg 2010

National Institutes of Health Findings

Robert Dulbecco - A turning point in cancer research: Sequencing the human genome

Human Genome Project Results
Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

Craig Venter - The sequence of the human genome

Megabase Deletions of Gene Deserts Result in Viable
Mice

ENCODE

Widespread purifying selection on RNA structure in mammals

[CoolHardLogic]

How Tony Reed made over 80 excellent and informative videos: he did the research creationists refuse to do.

[JacksonWheat]

Terrific as always. I’m so glad you mentioned ENCODE. It’s always getting abused by creationists.

[borisbauwens]

The intuition that all useless DNA would be removed by selection doesn't work once you do some back of the envelope calculations for the energetic cost/benefit of deleting small bits of DNA from a very large genome. The main cost cutting is stopping translation, the cost of transcription and replication is negligible, but even then that cost is still small compared to all other metabolic stuff that is going on.
Which is why there are so many pseudogenes: the probability of mutations that stop translation are higher, AND once they appeared, further mutations that stop transcription, or deletion mutants of the entire sequence, have very little selective pressure.

It's only in bacteria or viruses where population sizes are huge, replication time is fast, competition for resources is strong and genomes are small, that selection can efficiently get rid of excess DNA and the genome gets "streamlined".

[condorboss]

"All the DNA's a stage, and the genes and introns merely codons. They have their bases and their centrons and each in its turn plays many replications." ( _Apologies to W Shakespeare_ )

[shelledreptile]

You put an effort in this video .. And it is AWESOME
Thank you Tony

[chrisose]

There doesn't seem to be any Creation arguments that are not either misleading or outright lies.

[EdwardHowton]

I'm a 37 year old Canadian. As such, when I was in a public high school, I had biology classes and religion classes, the latter being pretty much christian propaganda (although they invited a youth pastor once a year to lie more specifically, and one year he made the mistake of letting us know other religions existed, which is where I realized I was an atheist, not that I knew that word). I never learned a single thing about evolution in high school. Not one. We learned anatomy and... that's pretty much it. I'm not even sure if I learned about DNA in high school. Everything I know (and the way more stuff I've forgotten or half-remember) I picked up off of Youtube since.

Thanks, creationists! Your lies are valuable sources of curiosity for those of us with functioning brains who can look up information.

[Richardj]

Subscribed well yes been watching for a while, I'm going to miss these when the end comes. Thanks for all the hard work! These will live on as a testament of your hard work. Hopefully people who have misconceptions of different fields of science will learn the truth.

[zune]

Thorough, concise, clear and informative. Just another top-notch video from Tony.

[alanw]

Welcome back, brother. Unless you've been back and I need to get caught up. : )

[Pyriphlegeton]

Hey Tony :)
A wonderfully informative and interesting video, as always,
I'd be interested in what your educational background is. Did you formally study science or is your scientific understanding self-taught?

[leojaksic]

Glad to see you're back. Good luck.

[johnavi]

Dude. No matter how many of these vids I share with creationists, they always seem to label anything scientific as biased junk. It's one big conspiracy. I don't get it. Great video. More knowledge/logic/ammo for me.

[ssjgarfield]

Great new episode

I wonder which human fossil is causing the argument creationists have against evolution in the next episode

[FishHeadSalad]

I always call it "the goo" that sticks to the double helix.
Get the genome of a Neanderthal for example, it is the on off switches (the attached protein "goo") that diversifies them from us!
But it is those on off switches attached to those double helices that serve out the plate of life in which creates the diversity of life contained within those different lengths of DNA and the "goo" attached.

[NEGATINofP]

Any day I can start with a Tony video is a good day,

[VierthalerStudios]

I can’t wait till you do the one about biblical dinosaurs

[borisbauwens]

These are two relevant papers, one that tries to cut through all the confusion by giving each category of DNA a strictly defined name

And this one, from the same author, that uses population genetics to show how the human genome is mostly junk.

The main irony with the overlap between junk DNA discussions and creationism is that creationists seem to be divided in two camps: those who think junk exists because of the Fall, and those who think there is no junk.
Sometimes the same people argue for both sides, just not at once, but based on what day of the week it is I guess.

[subductionzone]

Excellent as usual. Nice mention of amoebae.. I like to use them occasionally in a debate. I ask creationists if they are two hundreds times as complex as a man. They can't seem to understand that massive amounts of non-coding DNA should not be found in any organism if their beliefs are correct.

[RonningMan]

Could you make a video about the Paluxy river "dino and man" footprints? Yes, they have been refuted by others before, but guys like Ian Juby have some further claims about them that I haven't seen refuted anywhere.