Alison Nguyen,
axioms,
Carmen Sapienza,
chromosomes,
DNA,
Doris Bachtrog,
Drosophila melanogaster,
Emily Brown,
euchromatin,
Evolution,
Francis Crick,
fruit fly,
genetics,
heterochromatic proteins,
heterochromatin,
Junk DNA,
Leslie Orgel,
nucleus,
organism,
phenotype,
repetitive sequences,
Richard Dawkins,
RNA,
The Selfish Gene,
transposable elements,
W. Ford Doolittle,
Y chromosome
In April 1980, almost exactly forty years ago, the journal Nature published a pair of highly influential articles on the topic of what has become known as “junk” or “selfish” DNA. Both reflected the key concept of The Selfish Gene, the highly influential 1976 book by Richard Dawkins, namely, that organisms are merely DNA’s way of making more DNA. The first was authored by W. Ford Doolittle and Carmen Sapienza and titled “Selfish genes, the phenotype paradigm and genome evolution.”1 The second was authored by Leslie Orgel and Francis Crick and titled “Selfish DNA: the ultimate parasite.”2 Together they posited an easy-to-grasp way to conceive of “excess” nucleotides along chromosomes — repetitive sequences in general and transposable elements in particular. In short, it was proposed that most such DNA elements…