Month: September 2022

MAINSTREAM VIEW: TERRA INFIRMA. "Significant parts of the genome are largely uncharted territory. Only about 5 percent of the 19,000 to 21,000 protein-encoding genes are situated entirely within portions of the human genome currently characterized with high confidence." https://lnkd.in/emhRZgK View in LinkedIn

SOBERING STATE OF AFFAIRS. "The Stanford-NIST team found that, on average, about a fifth of each of the 56 disease-related genes flagged by ACMG is situated outside well-characterized, high-confidence regions of the NIST reference genome." https://lnkd.in/emhRZgK View in LinkedIn

ESSENTIAL GENES WITH NO FUNCTION. "The crux of the story is this: an astonishing number of the genes added to Syn 3.0 at the behest of their computer model, while apparently essential for life, have no known function. Their final genome had exactly 473 genes in it, and a whopping 149 of these are currently mysterious." Not no function, just none yet known. Syn 3.0 was a minimal genome creation. https://lnkd.in/eJEhicj View in LinkedIn

MOBILE ELEMENTS. "The majority of human DNA consists of repetitive, mutationally degraded sequences." Chew on that one. http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1004351 View in LinkedIn

THE ROOT OF THE CASE FOR JUNK DNA. "There are unambiguous examples of nonprotein-coding sequences of various types having been co-opted for organism-level functions in gene regulation, chromosome structure, and other roles, but at present evidence from the published literature suggests that these represent a small minority of the human genome." http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1004351 View in LinkedIn

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE for the next two weekends deals with the stunning emergence of flowering plants (angiosperms) on this planet. This event changed terrestrial biodiversity forever. This group is dominant, richly diverse, and very successful. Flowers, it turns out, are all about sexual recombination of genes. The genetic basis of this sudden event appears related to gene duplication. Rethink these remarkable creatures. View in LinkedIn

SONG OF DARWIN. "The more I study nature, the more I become impressed […] that the contrivances and beautiful adaptations [acquired through natural selection] transcend in an incomparable degree [those] which the most fertile imagination of the most imaginative man could suggest with unlimited time at his disposal." https://lnkd.in/eykUy37 View in LinkedIn

FRESH GENES. "Flowers are all about sex, that's for sure." https://lnkd.in/e-2Hbnt View in LinkedIn

FLOWERING PLANTS. "Angiosperms are seed-producing plants; they are distinguished from gymnosperms by characteristics including flowers, endosperm within the seeds, and the production of fruits that contain the seeds. Etymologically, angiosperm means a plant that produces seeds within an enclosure, in other words, a fruiting plant." https://lnkd.in/en2Nbzs View in LinkedIn

DOMINANT PLANTS. "Our world is an angiosperm world. The roughly 350,000 known species of flowering plants make up about 90% of all living plant species. Without them, we would have none of our major crops including those used to feed livestock, and one of the most important carbon sinks that mop up our carbon dioxide emissions would be missing." https://lnkd.in/e27U-gk View in LinkedIn