I'm working (slowly) on a book called What's in Your Genome?: 90% of your genome is junk! The first chapter is an introduction to genomes and DNA [What's in Your Genome? Chapter 1: Introducing Genomes ]. Chapter 2 is an overview of the human genome. It's a summary of known functional sequences and known junk DNA [What's in Your Genome? Chapter 2: The Big Picture]. Here's the TOC entry for Chapter 3: What Is a Gene?. The goal is to define "gene" and determine how many protein-coding genes are in the human genome. (Noncoding genes are described in the next chapter.)
Chapter 3: What Is a Gene?
- Defining a gene
- Box 3-1: Philosophers and genes
- Counting Genes
- Misleading statements about the number of genes
- Introns and the evolution of split genes
- Introns are mostly junk
- Alternative splicing
- Box 3-2: Competing databases
- Alternative splicing and disease
- Box 3-3: The false logic of the argument from complexity
- Gene families and the birth & death of genes
- Box 3-4: Real orphans in the human genome
- Different kinds of pseudogenes
- Box 3-5: Conserved pseudogenes and Ken Miller’s argument against intelligent design
- Are they really pseudogenes?
- How accurate is the genome sequence?
- The Central Dogma of Molecular Biology
- ENCODE proposes a “new” definition of “gene”
- What is noncoding DNA?
- Dark matter
