Is the human genome highly functional or mostly junk? This is a question that is not only being asked in the creation-evolution debate; it is a question raging in the ivory tower as well. The ‘old guard’ is much more likely to resist any claim that large swaths of the genome are useful. The ‘young punks’ in science is more willing to accept the obvious fact that the genome is highly functional. Who is going to win? In this episode, Dr Carter highlights four new studies that ratchet the argument toward high function.

Notes and links:’

• Carter 2023 What proportion of the human genome is actually functional? And how much variation is tolerable?
• Zhang et al. 2023 FOXP3 recognizes microsatellites and bridges DNA through multimerization
• Walter 2024 Are non-protein coding RNAs junk or treasure?
• Stepankiw et al. 2023 The human genome contains over a million autonomous exons
• Chen et al. 2023 A genomic mutational constraint map using variation in 76,156 human genomes
• Moran 2023 What’s in your genomes? 90% of your genome is junk

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