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ENCODE and their current definition of "function"

ENCODE has mostly abandoned it's definition of function based on biochemical activity and replaced it with "candidate" function or "likely" function, but the message isn't getting out.

Back in 2012, the Encode Consortium announced that 80% of the human genome was functional and junk DNA was dead [What did the ENCODE Consortium say in 2012?]. This claim was widely disputed, causing the ENCODE Consortium leaders to back down in 2014 and restate their goal (Kellis et al. 2014). The new goal is merely to map all the potential functional elements.

... the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements Project [ENCODE] was launched to contribute maps of RNA transcripts, transcriptional regulator binding sites, and chromatin states in many cell types.

The new goal was repeated when the ENCODE III results were published in 2020, although you had to read carefully to recognize that they were no longer claiming to identify functional elements in the genome and they were raising no objections to junk DNA [ENCODE 3: A lesson in obfuscation and opaqueness].

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This post first appeared on Sandwalk, please read the originial post: here

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ENCODE and their current definition of "function"

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