Prevailing scientific assumptions often die hard, especially when they fit so neatly into an evolutionary view of the development of life on Earth. On a new episode of ID the Future, Dr. Casey Luskin gives me an update on the paradigm shift around the concept of “junk DNA.” 

Luskin explains that intelligent design theorists have long argued against the idea that non-protein coding DNA is useless evolutionary junk, instead predicting that it serves important biological functions. Year after year for over a decade, new evidence has emerged revealing such functions and vindicating ID scientists. Luskin summarizes several recent papers that have found specific functions for non-coding DNA, such as regulating gene expression, controlling development, and influencing epigenetic processes. He then reports on the latest new evidence: the function of short tandem repeats (STRs), previously considered “junk DNA.” Luskin also discusses the work of molecular biologist John Mattick, who has written recently about the shift in thinking about “junk DNA.” Luskin suggests a new way of looking at non-protein coding regions of DNA and concludes that, far from junk, these “highly compact information suites” are essential and serve a variety of important functions in the genome. Download the podcast or listen to it here.

Dig Deeper

Read Dr. Luskin’s coverage of “junk DNA” at Evolution News:

• “Newly Published Paper in BioEssays Recognizes Kuhnian ‘Paradigm Shift’ Against Junk DNA“
• “Former ‘Junk DNA,’ STRs Found to Be ‘Rheostats’ that ‘Precisely Regulate Gene Expression’”
• More articles on “junk DNA”

Read Dr. Jonathan Wells’s prescient predictions about junk DNA in his 2011 book The Myth of Junk DNA.