Intelligent Design Creationists are heavily invested in refuting junk DNA because it casts doubt on their model of an intelligently designed human. Over the years they have advanced all kind… Read More

Today is the 50th anniversary of my Ph.D. oral defense. The event took place in the Department of Biochemical Sciences at Princeton University back in 1974. It began with a departmental semi… Read More

The "All of Us Research Program" is an American effort to sequence one million genomes. The stated goal is to study human genetic variants and link them to genetic diseases. The study is com… Read More

I'm a retired member of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto. For many decades researchers here have been complaining that they don't get the recognition they deserve. They w… Read More

Should universities remove online courses that contain incorrect or misleading information? There are lots of scientific controversies where different scientists have conflicting views… Read More

China has become a science powerhouse and it achieved this goal, in part, by sending its young scientitsts abroad to train in universities in Canada, Australia, United States, and Europe. Ma… Read More

Paul Nelson is a Senior Fellow of the Discovery Institute—the most important source of intelligent design propaganda. Paul and I have been disagreeing about science for many years. He… Read More

Happy St. Patrick's Day! These are my great-grandparents Thomas Keys Foster, born in County Tyrone on September 5, 1852 and Eliza Ann Job, born in Fintona, County Tyrone on August 18, 1852… Read More

I've been reading Philip Ball's book on "How Life Works" and I find it increasingly frustrating because he consistently describes things that he's "discovered" that biochemists like me must… Read More

I'm discussing a recent paper published by Nils Walter (Walter, 2024). He is arguing against junk DNA by claiming that the human genome contains large numbers of non-coding genes. This… Read More

I'm discussing a recent paper published by Nils Walter (Walter, 2024). He is arguing against junk DNA by claiming that the human genome contains large numbers of non-coding genes. This… Read More

I'm discussing a recent paper published by Nils Walter (Walter, 2024). He is arguing against junk DNA by claiming that the human genome contains large numbers of non-coding genes. This… Read More

The neutral theory was first proposed by Mootoo Kimura in 1968 (Kimura, 1968). The following year, a similar idea was published in a seminal paper by Jack King and Thomas Jukes (King and Ju… Read More

Robert Lawrence Kuhn has published a series of videos on his "Closer to Truth" site. On March 4, 2024 he posted a teaser video introducing Season 23: "Why Philosophy of Biology." The video c… Read More

I'm discussing a recent paper published by Nils Walter (Walter, 2024). He is arguing against junk DNA by claiming that the human genome contains large numbers of non-coding genes. This… Read More

I'm discussing a recent paper published by Nils Walter (Walter, 2024). He is arguing against junk DNA by claiming that the human genome contains large numbers of non-coding genes. This… Read More

I'm discussing a recent paper published by Nils Walter (Walter, 2024). He is trying to explain the conflict between proponents of junk DNA and their opponents. His main focus is building a c… Read More

I'm discussing a recent paper published by Nils Walter (Walter, 2024). He is trying to explain the conflict between proponents of junk DNA and their opponents. His main focus is building a c… Read More

Nils Walter attempts to present the case for a functional genome by reconciling opposing viewpoints. I address his criticisms of the junk DNA position and discuss his arguments in favor of l… Read More

I'm discussing a recent paper published by Nils Walter (Walter, 2024). He is trying to explain the conflict between proponents of junk DNA and their opponents. His main focus is building a c… Read More

In my opinion, the war in Ukraine is much more complicated than most people realize. We are constantly bombarded with propaganda from all sides and it inhibits rational thinking. One of the… Read More

The Microsoft browser (Edge) has a built in function called Copilot. It's an AI assistant based on ChatGPT-4. I decided to test it byt asking "What is junk DNA?" and here's the answer i… Read More

With age comes wisdom, but sometimes age comes alone. Oscar Wilde Like many baby boomers, I sometimes forget people's names and other important bits of information. Sometimes I can't find a… Read More

Gene expression in eukaryotes is influenced by the state of chromatin. Tightly packed nucleosomes inhibit the binding of transcription factors and RNA polymerase so that genes in these regio… Read More

Philip Ball has just published a new book "How Life Works." The subtitle is "A User’s Guide to the New Biology" and that should tell you all you need to know. This is going to be a boo… Read More

I'm interested in the spread of science misinformation on the internet. The misinformation about the human genome is a good example that illustrates the problem. There are many other example… Read More

Watch this short video from Daniel Stern Cardinale. He read my book! Read More

I was a big fan of Benjamin Lewin. Back in the 1970's he published the first volumes of what was to become Genes, the authoritative textbook of molecular biology. I admired his ability to un… Read More

A recent post on Evolution News (sic) promotes a a new podcast: Casey Luskin on Junk DNA’s “Kuhnian Paradigm Shift”. You can listen to the podcast here but most Sandwalk re… Read More

I had a long chat with Kat Arney a few weeks ago and she has now taken the best parts of that conversation and put them in her latest Genetics Society podcast: Genes, junk and the 'dark geno… Read More

The phrase "dark matter of the genome" is used by scientists who are skeptical of junk DNA so they want to convey the impression that most of the genome consists of important DNA whose funct… Read More

That's part of the title of podcast by Kat Arney who interviews Matthew Cobb [Double helix double crossing? What really happened between Rosalind Franklin, James Watson and Francis Crick?]… Read More

The November 16th issue of Nature has an article about ChatGPT: ChatGPT has entered the classroom: how LLMs could transform education. It reports that the latest version (GPT4) can only answ… Read More

Science in School is a magazine for European science teachers. Two graduate students1 have just published an article in the November issue: Not junk after all: the importance of non-coding R… Read More

I wondered whether ChatGPT had improved in the last six months so I asked it again about junk DNA. The answers reveal that ChatGPT is still lying and spreading false information. What i… Read More

Raphaël Champeimont has a blog called The Purple Blog: Freedom and Technology. His latest post is called The great Pufferfish Genome and it's well worth a read. Here's an excerpt … Read More

A junk-filled genome Review of: What’s In Your Genome? 90% of Your Genome Is Junk, by Laurence A. Moran, 2023. University of Toronto Press. 392 pp. ISBN: 9781487508593 Norman A Joh… Read More

I know Stephen Meyer and I have discussed his views on creationism many times. Some of the issues he raises are quite interesting and they aren't easy to refute. In this video from 2020, he… Read More

The Zoonomia project aligned the genome sequences of 240 mammalian species and determined that only 10.7% of the human genome is conserved. This is consistent with the idea that about 90% of… Read More

There are a million potential transcription regulatory sites in the human genome. How many of these function as true regulatory sites? One of the important questions about the human gen… Read More

Most of the genes in eukaryotes contain introns that are removed by splicing during processing of the primary transcript. In some cases the gene produces two different functional RNAs due to… Read More

The latest summary of the number of genes in the human genome gets the number of protein-coding genes correct but their estimate of the number of known non-coding genes is far too high… Read More

Jonathan McLatchie is an Intelligent Design Creationist who now blogs frequently on the Discovery website Evolution News [sic]. His latest post is How NOT to Argue Against Irreducible Comple… Read More

Evelyn Fox Keller died a few days ago (Sept. 22, 2023). She was a professor of History and Philosopher of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Boston, MA, USA). Most of the… Read More

Here's an excerpt from his review. In his new book "What’s in Your Genome?", Laurence A. Moran shows that all the research done in the decades since that letter was written has co… Read More

This is a video of a debate that took place in Kraków, Poland on June 2, 2023. The topic was "Intelligent design in nature—illusion or reality?" (Spoiler alert! - the answ… Read More

This is a very slick video from the Discovery Institute. It shows you what we are up against. Anyone who thinks they can easily refute the claims in this video hasn't tried. Intelligen… Read More

You know you're in for a treat when papers published in a (previously) reputable journal make frequent references to Dennis Noble and James Shapiro. The purpose of this post is to demo… Read More

John Mattick continues to promote the idea that he is leading a paradigm shift in molecular biology. He believes that he and his colleagues have discovered a vast world of noncod… Read More

John Mattick is famous for arguing that there's a correlation between genome size and complexity; notably in a 2004 Scientific American article (Mattick, 2004) [Genome Size, Complexity, and… Read More

Paradigm shifts are rare but paradigm shafts are common. A paradigm shaft is when a scientist describes a false paradigm that supposedly ruled in the past then shows how their own work overt… Read More

The latest Shangai rankings can be found here. These are the criteria used to determine the ranking. As usual, American universities dominate the rankings taking eight of the top… Read More

Serious criticisms of evolutionary theory have been floating around for half a century. The main focus is over the Modern Synthesis and whether it's the best explanation of evolution. That r… Read More

I just learned that Don Voet died on April 11th, 2023. Don and Judy Voet were the authors of one of the most successful biochemistry textbooks of all time and for a long time they were the e… Read More

The Wikipedia article on evolution [Evolution] is a "Featured article," which means two things: (1) it is one of the best articles Wikipedia has to offer, and (2) it was voted a featured art… Read More

There's something called "the EDIT lab blog" written by people at King's College In London (UK). Here's a recent post (May 19, 2023) that was apparently written by a Ph.D. student: J for Jun… Read More

If you are interested in learning more about junk DNA here's some links to relevant information. Prologue Chapter 1: Introducing Genomes Chapter 2: The Evolution of Sloppy Genomes C… Read More

We had a good time talking about junk DNA, alternative splicing, and science misinformation Read More

Zach Hancock has posted another YouTube video. This one is about the evolution of genomic complexity. Have you ever wondered why eukaryotic biochemistry is so much more complex than the same… Read More

Shapiro doubles down on his claim that junk DNA doesn't exist. It's been a while since we've heard from James Shaprio. You might recall that James A. Shapiro is a biochemistry/microbiol… Read More

Gert Korthof thinks that the current view of evolution is incomplete and he's looking for a better explanation. He just finished reading my book so he wrote a review on his blog. Scien… Read More

In last chapter of my book I try to convince readers that biochemistry, molecular biology, and evolution are sloppy processes and the idea of a sloppy genome is a logical consequence of evol… Read More

Francis Collins, and many others, believe that the concept of junk DNA is outmoded because recent discoveries have shown that most of the human genome is devoted to regulation. This is part… Read More

In September 2012, the ENCODE researchers published a bunch of papers claiming to show that 80% of the human genome was functional. They helped orchestrate a massive publicity campaign with… Read More

I think there are no more than 5,000 noncoding genes but many scientists claim that there are tens of thousands of newly discovered noncoding genes. I describe the known noncoding genes (les… Read More

This chapter describes gene families in the human genome. I explain how new genes are born by gene duplication and how they die by deletion or by becoming pseudogenes. Our genome is littered… Read More

Here's a link to the summary of what's in Chapter 6. The important topics are the correct definition of "gene" and the number of protein-coding genes. I explain the false history concerning… Read More

Here's a link to a summary of what's in Chapter 5. It lists the main components of the human genome and concludes that less than 10% of the genome is functional. In other words, 90% of your… Read More

Chapter 4: Why Don't Mutations Kill Us? Read More

See Chapter 3: Repetitive DNA and Mobile Genetic Elements Read More

If you are interested in learning more about junk DNA here's some links to relevant information. Prologue Introducing Genomes The Evolution of Sloppy Genomes Read More

It was 70 years ago today that the famous Watson and Crick paper was published in Nature along with papers by Franklin & Gosling and Wilkins, Stokes, & Wilson. Threre's a great deal… Read More

I asked ChatGPT some questions about junk DNA and it made up a Francis Crick quotation and misrepresented the view of Susumu Ohno. We have finally restored the Junk DNA article on Wikipe… Read More

The antarctic krill genome is the largest animal genome sequenced to date. Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba) is a species of small crustacean (about 6 cm long) that lives in large swar… Read More

I'm finding it increasingly difficult to understand the scientific literature even in subjects that I've been following for decades. Is it just because I'm getting too old to keep up? He… Read More

The endorsements for my book are in. One of the last steps in publishing a book is to collect endorsements—favorable statements from famous people who urge you to buy the book. The… Read More

The correct definition of a molecular gene isn't difficult but getting it recognized and accepted is a different story. When writing my book on junk DNA I realized that there was an issu… Read More

The initial measurement of the difference between the human and chimp genomes was based on aligning 2.4 billion base pairs in the two genomes. This gave a difference of 1.23% by countin… Read More

The 2022 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicne went to Svante Pääbo “for his discoveries concerning the genomes of extinct hominins and human evolution”. It's one of a l… Read More

There's an old saying that birds of a feather flock together. It means that people with the same interests tend to associate with each other. It's extended meaning refers to the fact that pe… Read More

Several people have commented on Facebook about an interview with Matthew Cobb [Reflections on the Double Helix's Platinum Anniversary]. Cobb has written several books that you all should ha… Read More

C. David Allis died on January 8, 2023. You can read about his history of awards and accomplishments in the Nature obituary with the provocative subtitle Biologist who revolutionized the chr… Read More

Wikipedia is a not-for-profit crowdsourced encyclopedia that's open to anybody who wants to contribute. This is both a strength and a weakness but the weaknesses are becoming important in an… Read More

Charles Darwin, the greatest scientist who ever lived, was born on this day in 1809 [Darwin still spurs tributes, debates] [Happy Darwin Day!] [Darwin Day 2017]. Darwin is mostly famous for… Read More

The last few weeks have been hectic. I got the first page proofs about a month ago and my job was to proof read those pages and prepare the index. Proof reading is tedious and the pressure i… Read More

My 9th great grandfather is John Banks (1619-1685) who was born in Essex (England) and moved to the colony of Connecticut in 1634. He marrried Marie Tainter (1619-1667) and settled down in G… Read More

There are several different ways to describe the human genome but the most common one focuses on the DNA content of the nucleus in eukaryotes; it does not include mitochondrial and chloropla… Read More

Here are a few questions for ChatGPT and its answers. The AI program takes the most common information on the web and spews it back at you. It cannot tell which information is correct or whi… Read More

Check out this website, What's in Your Genome if you want to see a preview of my book (Preface, Prologue, part of Chapter 1). The book will be released on May 16, 2023. We are currently… Read More

New names for very large and very small weights and sizes have been adopted. Last November's meeting of the General Conference on Weights and Measures wasn't covered by the major media o… Read More

In order to have a productive discussion about junk DNA we needed to agree on how to define "function" and "junk." Disagreements over the definitions spawned the Function Wars that became in… Read More

Scientists have recently developed an mRNA-lipid nanoparticle flu vaccine that protects against all known flu variants. There are four types of influenza viruses but only the A and B viruses… Read More

Most of our genome is transcribed but so far only a small number of these transcripts have a well-established biological function. The fact that most of our genome is transcribed has bee… Read More

A new master's thesis on the history of junk DNA has been posted. It's from the Department of History at the University of Chicago. My routine scan for articles on junk DNA turned up the a… Read More

The most important step in the regulation of protein-coding genes in E. coli is the rate of binding of RNA polymerase to the promoter region. A group of scientists at the University of C… Read More

Don't bother trying to reason with a publisher. All of them have different views on proper style and every single one of them is absolutely certain that their style is the only correct one… Read More

There's a lot of talk about ChatGPT and how it can prepare lectures and get good grades on undergraduate exams. However, ChatGPT is only as good as the information that's popular on the inte… Read More

Some evolutionary biologists think—incorrectly, in my opinion—that molecular biology has made no contributions to our understanding of evolution. PNAS published a series of a… Read More

New techniques are being developed to obtain the complete sequences of both copies (maternal and paternal) of a typical diploid individual. The first two sequences of the human genome w… Read More

Students in a special topics course at the University of Michigan were taught how to edit a Wikipedia article in order to promote function in repetitive DNA and downplay junk. The Wikipedi… Read More