In article <495 at reservoir.win-uk.net>,
Shane McKee <shane at reservoir.win-uk.net> wrote:
>Jeffrey Mattox (jeff at cher.heurikon.com) writes:
...
>>This is the "C-value paradox."
>>I don't see this as a paradox at all - it's just an interesting
>phenomenon. Any other thoughts?
It used to be a paradox, before we knew about junk DNA, transposons, etc.
There was far more DNA in genomes than we could account for by genes.
That was the paradox. There was also a population-genetic version of the
paradox too. Calculations of the mutational load showed that if all that
DNA was information-bearing, given reasonable per-base mutation rates,
we'd all be dead.
The discovery of all the different kinds of noncoding DNA resolved the
paradox. Interestingly, the mutation-load argument is still relevant and
is a fairly powerful objection to most of our DNA being meaningful, in
the sense that it must be in that particular sequence.
--
Joe Felsenstein joe at genetics.washington.edu (IP No. 128.95.12.41)
Dept. of Genetics, Univ. of Washington, Box 357360, Seattle, WA 98195-7360 USA
