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VESTIGIAL EFFECTS. "It seems to us likely that effects of accumulating mutations in humans are now seen at postreproductive ages bearing age-specific signatures that were imprinted at earlier epochs when their contributions were more rapidly lethal at younger ages." http://www.pnas.org/content/110/25/10141.full View in LinkedIn

ODDBALL EXCEPTIONS. "For species like humans, with substantial postreproductive survival, theories that emphasize mutation accumulation face the challenge of accounting for the absence of a wall of death at the end of reproduction." http://www.pnas.org/content/110/25/10141.full View in LinkedIn

MUCH OF NON-CODING DNA OF UNKNOWN FUNCTION. "In this review, we provide an overview of the major arguments that have been presented in support of the notion that a large portion of most eukaryotic genomes lacks an organism-level function.” http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1004351 View in LinkedIn

MARGIN OF ERROR. "However, more recent computational models have demonstrated that genomes could sustain multiple slightly deleterious mutations per generation." http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1004351 View in LinkedIn

MUTATION RATE. "Currently, the rate of mutation in humans is estimated to be anywhere from 70–150 mutations per generation. By this line of reasoning, we would estimate that, at most, only 1% of the nucleotides in the genome are essential for viability in a strict sequence-specific way." http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1004351 View in LinkedIn

MUTATION BREAKPOINT. "This rate is approximately one deleterious mutation per generation. In this context it becomes clear that the overall mutation rate would place an upper limit to the amount of functional DNA." http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1004351 View in LinkedIn

BIRTH OF NEW GENES. "Rarely, these mutations will turn out to be beneficial, and a new gene may arise (“neofunctionalization”)." http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1004351 View in LinkedIn

FREE PASS. "Gene duplication can alleviate the constraint imposed by natural selection on changes to important gene regions by allowing one copy to maintain the original function as the other undergoes mutation." http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1004351 View in LinkedIn

BAD GENE ACCUMULATION. "However, if the rate at which these mutations are generated is higher than the rate at which natural selection can weed them out, then the collective genomes of the organisms in the species will suffer a meltdown as the total number of deleterious alleles increases with each generation." http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1004351 View in LinkedIn

NEW PERSPECTIVE. "The scale of death’s recent evolution is also difficult to grasp, and accepting it may require a thorough reorientation toward life." https://muse.jhu.edu/chapter/275814 View in LinkedIn