17Feb 2022 by Post

Cinderella Story? Transposons Gain New Respect

biology, Christie Wilcox, Cinderella, disease, Drosophila, ENCODE, Evolution, Evolution News, Intelligent Design, John Hewitt, Josefa González, Junk DNA, Michael Denton, myelin, natural selection, noncoding DNA, parasites, Paul Nelson, Pseudomonas, retrotransposons, retroviruses, Spanish Research Council, symbionts, The Scientist, transposable elements, transposons
Junk DNA has been getting redress for decades of ignominy. Now, retrotransposons and transposable elements may be next in line for a better reputation. Source
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04Feb 2020 by Post

Important Medical Effects but Modest Mutations

Charles Darwin, CypA, Darwin Devolves, Darwinian processes, Evolution, FCT, function, Functional-Coded-elemenT, HIV, information, isoform, natural selection, New Scientist, Origin of Species, owl monkey, protein, random mutation, retroviruses, rhesus macaque, RNA, The Quarterly Review of Biology, TRIM5
I was asked to address a comment left by a viewer of one of Discovery’s YouTube videos. The comment is:1 Some monkeys have a mutation in a protein called TRIM5 that results in a piece of another, defunct protein being tacked onto TRIM5. The result is a hybrid protein called TRIM5-CypA, which can protect cells from infection with retroviruses such as HIV. Here, a single mutation has resulted in a new protein with a new and potentially vital function. New protein, new function, new information. A bit of Googling shows that the text was taken word-for-word from an old article (2008) on the New Scientist website2 (perhaps by way of intermediate copying). That was during a period when the 150th anniversary of the publication of the Origin of Species was…
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