🚀 go-pugleaf

baez@guitar.ucr.edu (john baez) writes:


>>It's pretty highly conserved, so calling it "junk DNA" is probably
>>just due to the hubris of biologists, IMHO. 

>I'd love to know more about that.  What are some hypotheses for what its
>role might be?

IMHO, it's "role" is rather indirect. That is, it isn't doing anything 
mysterious at the current time. It serves as a "resevoir" of potential 
repretoires that could be induced into a specific role in response to a 
novel perturbation or set of circumstances. Without such a resevoir there 
could be no adaptability. An organism perfectly suited to its 
current environment is one that will destruct at the next change in that 
environment.

My experience has been that most people cling to maximal efficiency 
arguments for some personal or ideological reasons. But there's a lot of 
noise out there, and organisms that can't hedge their bets are doomed. 
Simple as that. (Or is it?)

Cheers,
Bob U.