Thursday, June 14, 2007

Wired for Junk

Wired had an interesting article about Junk DNA and how it is so very important because most of the mutations between possums and humans happens in the junk DNA. Missing the obvious fact that that is evidence in favor of it being junk. The little sections of DNA that doesn't change between organisms are the important parts.

Here's an example from my own evolutionary algorithms. The following are the genotypes of related organisms:

**/+-*4e-a=1d=8828l53b7lckkfdj9
**/++*5e-%21d%84gjgfgdhd12506dj
**/++*4e-cb1dl8ghc4fili903l4a9j
*//+/*6e-=f1d$8ge177ca2d6j66d91
*-/+/+5e-77%d=8h908fibe6e611i5j
**/++*6e--%1d=8f0832bcj735a9lj3
**/++*5e-531d=9f2b6blka7a431ibk
**/++*4e-+71d=79f021kk6f1h1063i

Anybody want to take a guess at what the important bits are and what the junk DNA is? In fact, one can tell which bits are extremely important and which have a little bit of wiggle-room if you look closely.

The original species:
**/++*4e-+c1d=89f1bd2k6f1h1b63i

The phenotype is:
*(*(+(e,-(=(1,b),8)),+(+(9,f),c)),/(*(1,d),4))

So the ending 11 or so digits don't do anything, and thus mutate all over the place. Other sections don't matter much either. =(1,b) to have 8 subtracted later is at most able to change that e + -8 to an e + -7, and thus the 1b digits in the genotype vary greatly. In fact, the digits are different in every subspecies.

Junk DNA is actually junk.

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