So-Called 'Junk DNA' Is the Grammar of Genetic Language, Scientists Say

New findings support the idea that so-called junk DNA, once thought irrelevant, is truly important.

The study, published last week in Science, showed that a stretch of junk DNA activated the growth hormone gene that it surrounded. The work was done in rats, but the basic principle can almost certainly be extrapolated to people.

That junk DNA isn't junk is not exactly a new concept. However, as we posted a while ago, mainstream geneticists (and science journalists) are finally catching up to the self-evident idea that 95% of our genetic material is more than decoration.

“Some of the junk DNA might be considered punctuation marks – commas and full stops that help make sense of the coding portion of the genome,” says Dr Victoria Lunyak, of the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine....

The quote comes from a brief Times blurb on the study. The writer,
Anjana Ahuja, deserves a shout for her most excellent lead:
"Itstrickytounderstandthissentenceisntit?"

Ahuja also observed that the findings could explain why gene therapy that transfers genes but not junk DNA hasn't fulfilled its promise, and illustrated it thusly:

And we know what happens when a foreman doesn’t turn up on a building site: you get the tea-drinking and wolf-whistling, but not much building.

Deep inside, you are a comma [The Times]

Developmentally regulated activation of a SINE B2 repeat as a domain boundary in organogenesis [Science]

Image: David Hutchinson, "Junk DNA Egg"*