Calling it junk didn't make sense to me 10 years ago, and today it is plain false.
DNA before protein sequence is used for binding modifiers.
This means that every protein has a huge if() { before them, and many kinds of different stuff can bind there in order to either suppress production of this protein or increase it. This is how all this stuff work.
How would it work otherwise, I always wondered. Will all proteins in DNA be produced at the same rate, as naive models will imply? It turns out, they aren't, and this is regulated by areas in 'junk' DNA.
Complaining about junk in DNA is like complaining about dispatch in computer program. All kinds of ifs and whiles and fors. Everybody knows our programs are 97% dispatch and 3% business logic computations after all. Or worse.
DNA before protein sequence is used for binding modifiers. This means that every protein has a huge if() { before them, and many kinds of different stuff can bind there in order to either suppress production of this protein or increase it. This is how all this stuff work.
How would it work otherwise, I always wondered. Will all proteins in DNA be produced at the same rate, as naive models will imply? It turns out, they aren't, and this is regulated by areas in 'junk' DNA.
Complaining about junk in DNA is like complaining about dispatch in computer program. All kinds of ifs and whiles and fors. Everybody knows our programs are 97% dispatch and 3% business logic computations after all. Or worse.