One Cell’s Junk

by

For decades, ever since we first began to study and understand our cell’s biology and the coding sequences of DNA, we saw bits and pieces that didn’t seem to make sense.  Strings of DNA that didn’t appear to do anything at all. It appears, they do quite a lot.

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Works Cited

  • Betamax King. “Encyclopaedia Britannica Commercial 1991.” YouTube, 21 July 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGewj6j_a7I.

  • Biémont, Christian. “Junk DNA as an Evolutionary Force.” Nature, 4 Oct. 2006, www.nature.com/articles/443521a?error=cookies_not_supported&code=142a4bf3-ab3e-40bf-9198-4a5a41abc350.

  • “Defective Satellite DNA Clustering Into Chromocenters Underlies Hybrid Incompatibility in Drosophila.” Molecular Biology and Evolution, academic.oup.com/mbe/article/38/11/4977/6327694.

  • “Flybase.org.” https://Flybase.org, flybase.org/reports/FBgn0000412.html.

  • Jha, Alok. “Time to Stop Trashing Junk DNA.” The Guardian, 14 Feb. 2018, www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/oct/20/genetics.science.

  • McElvery, Raleigh. “So-called ‘Junk’ DNA Plays a Key Role in Speciation.” MIT Department of Biology, 23 Aug. 2021, biology.mit.edu/so-called-junk-dna-plays-a-key-role-in-speciation.

  • NCBI – WWW Error Blocked Diagnostic. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10982875. Accessed 23 Oct. 2022.

  • Research – Yamashita Lab. yamashitalab.wi.mit.edu/research. Accessed 23 Oct. 2022.

  • “Scientists Discover a Role for ‘Junk’ DNA.” Life Sciences Institute, 12 July 2019, www.lsi.umich.edu/news/2018-04/scientists-discover-role-%E2%80%98junk%E2%80%99-dna.

  • TheLSIatUM. “Scientists Discover a Role for ‘Junk’ DNA.” YouTube, 11 Apr. 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BpElj0pqt0.

    —. “Scientists Discover a Role for ‘Junk’ DNA.” YouTube, 11 Apr. 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BpElj0pqt0.

  • “UCSD Study Shows ‘Junk’ DNA Has Evolutionary Importance.” ScienceDaily, www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/10/051020090946.htm. Accessed 23 Oct. 2022.

  • University of California Television (UCTV). “CARTA: The Genetics of Humanness: Katherine Pollard – Human Accelerated Regions in the Genome.” YouTube, 15 July 2011, www.youtube.com/watch?v=RilpJK6cnvk.

  • Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. “Seeing the Whole Blueprint: Uncovering the Purpose of ‘Genomic Junk.’” YouTube, 15 Apr. 2021, www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTZEzIoZuh4.

  • Zorich, Zach. “Is ‘Junk DNA’ What Makes Humans Unique?” Scientific American, 30 Jan. 2018, www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-junk-dna-what-makes-humans-unique.

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