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Mysterious ‘Jumping Gene’ That Appears 500k Times in Human DNA

theatlantic.com

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Re: Mysterious ‘Jumping Gene’ That Appears 500k Times in Human DNA

#11

Post by GlennS »

Erlich_Bachman wrote: post #3
PaulAJ wrote: post #2

The parasite theory is that transposons are rather like early computer viruses that replicated by embedding themselves in other executables: they exist only to make copies of themselves in their host genome. This theory is not incompatible with these results. Evolution is not a rational design process. Once a transposon starts replicating it is quite possible for the host genome to evolve to incorporate the transposo…

Aren't most intelligent designs actually done by sane engineers filled with quirks like this? Spaghetti code at places, leaky abstractions, hard-coded things, replicating old bugs to make the program compatible with bad OSes or other old software, etc. etc. This could just as easily be an artifact of the complexity of reality, not an argument for- or against "intelligent design". There might be reasons do doubt intel…

Intelligent Design, being a religious theory, usually carries the implication that the designer was infallible and made no mistakes, unless they were deliberate mistakes.

Re: Mysterious ‘Jumping Gene’ That Appears 500k Times in Human DNA

#12

Post by chiefalchemist »

> "Geneticists tend to pay attention when LINE1 inserts itself in a bad place, causing cancer or genetic disorders like hemophilia."

But it's not always doing bad, correct? The point being, these random insertions are not only part of the process, they are key. Without deviation these is no evolving.

Re: Mysterious ‘Jumping Gene’ That Appears 500k Times in Human DNA

#13

Post by kaybe »

coldtea wrote: post #4
Erlich_Bachman wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't most intelligent designs actually done by sane engineers filled with quirks like this? Spaghetti code at places, leaky abstractions, hard-coded things, replicating old bugs to make the program compatible with bad OSes or other old software, etc. etc. This could just as easily be an artifact of the complexity of reality, not an argument for- or against "intelligent design". There might be reasons do doubt intel…

> It could have just as easily be a bad engineer from a third-world country, that does not produce "perfect" code - just code that works. Because "first-world" country engineers don't do that?

Sounds like scientists to me, hah.

Re: Mysterious ‘Jumping Gene’ That Appears 500k Times in Human DNA

#14

Post by Retric »

Erlich_Bachman wrote: post #3
PaulAJ wrote: post #2

The parasite theory is that transposons are rather like early computer viruses that replicated by embedding themselves in other executables: they exist only to make copies of themselves in their host genome. This theory is not incompatible with these results. Evolution is not a rational design process. Once a transposon starts replicating it is quite possible for the host genome to evolve to incorporate the transposo…

Aren't most intelligent designs actually done by sane engineers filled with quirks like this? Spaghetti code at places, leaky abstractions, hard-coded things, replicating old bugs to make the program compatible with bad OSes or other old software, etc. etc. This could just as easily be an artifact of the complexity of reality, not an argument for- or against "intelligent design". There might be reasons do doubt intel…

Wait what? Are you arguing that 'god(s)' where and or might be incompetent?

Anyway, I don't think ID requires that every mutation was designed, rather that an intelegent agent made at least one adjustment to an ongoing process. The problem is it's not a falsifiable theory because it makes no specific testable predictions.

Re: Mysterious ‘Jumping Gene’ That Appears 500k Times in Human DNA

#15

Post by orf »

Retric wrote: post #14
Erlich_Bachman wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't most intelligent designs actually done by sane engineers filled with quirks like this? Spaghetti code at places, leaky abstractions, hard-coded things, replicating old bugs to make the program compatible with bad OSes or other old software, etc. etc. This could just as easily be an artifact of the complexity of reality, not an argument for- or against "intelligent design". There might be reasons do doubt intel…

Wait what? Are you arguing that 'god(s)' where and or might be incompetent? Anyway, I don't think ID requires that every mutation was designed, rather that an intelegent agent made at least one adjustment to an ongoing process. The problem is it's not a falsifiable theory because it makes no specific testable predictions.

If there is a god you could hardly call him incompetent after creating life. That doesn't exclude hacks or workarounds

Re: Mysterious ‘Jumping Gene’ That Appears 500k Times in Human DNA

#16

Post by Erlich_Bachman »

Retric wrote: post #14
Erlich_Bachman wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't most intelligent designs actually done by sane engineers filled with quirks like this? Spaghetti code at places, leaky abstractions, hard-coded things, replicating old bugs to make the program compatible with bad OSes or other old software, etc. etc. This could just as easily be an artifact of the complexity of reality, not an argument for- or against "intelligent design". There might be reasons do doubt intel…

Wait what? Are you arguing that 'god(s)' where and or might be incompetent? Anyway, I don't think ID requires that every mutation was designed, rather that an intelegent agent made at least one adjustment to an ongoing process. The problem is it's not a falsifiable theory because it makes no specific testable predictions.

> Wait what? Are you arguing that 'god(s)' where and or might be incompetent?

I get the humor in your question. Yet I would like to comment for the people who might be more seriously interested in this question, that the most enlightened view seems to be that 'god(s)' are not incompetent, but are simply not done yet, they haven't completed the design. That the design itself is not a finished final product, but rather a continuous form of development. If there is such a development, it would be quite logical that one could take any future (or just further in terms of advancement) iteration of some thing (like human genome), compare it to a previous version and make a claim that it's "inferior" or "incompetent". But this is just an assessment of a logical mind. It could just as easily be called an iteration which is perfectly designed for it's time and place and has an irreplaceable role in the grand scheme of things.

> The problem is it's not a falsifiable theory because it makes no specific testable predictions.

I so wish that more people would understand this. I was trying to point into exactly this by the original comment, saying basically that no scientific truth can be an argument for or against any spiritual claim, that they simply belong to the different areas of knowledge. People who are proficient in either areas of knowledge, are often ignorant to this incompatibility, trying to prove each other wrong. The solution is to recognize the proper way to fuse the two areas, not choose one of them and pretend that it's enough.

Re: Mysterious ‘Jumping Gene’ That Appears 500k Times in Human DNA

#17

Post by Erlich_Bachman »

Satam wrote: post #8
Erlich_Bachman wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen this being statistically significant in hiring people from different parts of the world. There are exceptions everywhere, but there are also certain trends. But I get your point that this information is irrelevant to the question at hand.

JIAN YANG!!!

"Is one of those racist and the other is not? Please don't hack my browser history.". Great show.

Re: Mysterious ‘Jumping Gene’ That Appears 500k Times in Human DNA

#18

Post by lkrubner »

If you are interested in this, you might also be interested in "promoter genes" which tend to be destructive to the organism they are part of, but which are also very good at promoting themselves, so they survive in the genome despite being harmful. A good book on the subject:

Genes in Conflict: The Biology of Selfish Genetic Elements

https://www.amazon.com/Genes-Conflict-Biology-Selfish-Elemen...

Re: Mysterious ‘Jumping Gene’ That Appears 500k Times in Human DNA

#19

Post by brohee »

snarfy wrote: post #9
PaulAJ wrote: post #2

The parasite theory is that transposons are rather like early computer viruses that replicated by embedding themselves in other executables: they exist only to make copies of themselves in their host genome. This theory is not incompatible with these results. Evolution is not a rational design process. Once a transposon starts replicating it is quite possible for the host genome to evolve to incorporate the transposo…

> no sane engineer would have done it like that. You should read the story of Mel [1]. [1] - http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/story-of-mel.html

Can't help but think a LGP-30 simulator would be the basis for a nice TIS-100 like game...

Re: Mysterious ‘Jumping Gene’ That Appears 500k Times in Human DNA

#20

Post by dfsegoat »

lkrubner wrote: post #18

If you are interested in this, you might also be interested in "promoter genes" which tend to be destructive to the organism they are part of, but which are also very good at promoting themselves, so they survive in the genome despite being harmful. A good book on the subject: Genes in Conflict: The Biology of Selfish Genetic Elements https://www.amazon.com/Genes-Conflict-Biology-Selfish-Elemen...

Indeed. It is this sort of "worm-like" or "near-virus" -like behavior of these genes (transposons, promoters, etc) that made me decide to split the difference between comp sci and molecular biology (bioinformatics) as an undergrad.

Nevermind the mitochondria - the powerhouse of our cells - which is basically believed to be a bacterial companion that our single celled ancestors integrated so tightly with - that it became part of our genome [1].

1 - https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/the-origin-of-mito...

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