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Comment by klmr | Hacker News Reader

> To say that massive portions of our DNA “have no benefit” without having proof of such, seems naive to me.

What makes you think scientists have no proof? The whole reason we know junk DNA has no important function for cell biology is that there’s good evidence that says so. There’s some wiggle room with the details but the general picture of this won’t change, and this has been studied for a long time and is fairly well understood.

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Whole genome sequencing on humans has only existed for 16 years (1). In 2003, the cost was prohibitive until NGS (next generation sequencing) techniques became commercialized. We can definitely disagree here as 15 years of research which in my worldview is focused mostly on coding DNA and karyotyping doesn’t seem like much to draw this conclusion. There’s plenty of decades old science that has shifted or been rewritten due to the rise of new techniques related to faster computing power.

It’s quite possible that I’m biased based on the labs I’m familiar with and papers I’ve been reading. I just haven’t seen the focus that you are talking about.

1 https://www.yourgenome.org/facts/timeline-history-of-genomic...

Junk DNA has already been studied before whole-genome sequencing existed, and evidence from NGS not only hasn’t overturned that research, it has largely corroborated it. And as for personal biases, I’m a staunch defender of the ENCODE research so I’m certainly not biased in favour of the concept of junk DNA.

Interesting. I may be biased in the other direction after reading "The Epigenetics Revolution" and "Junk DNA" by Nessa Carey.

ENCODE is such an amazing project! Also, thanks for your research on non coding DNA.

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