Category Archives: NOT junk

2009 Grand Prize Winner for most egregious use of “junk DNA”

By Michael Eisen | May 20, 2009

Research team finds important role for junk DNA by Kitta MacPherson Scientists have called it “junk DNA.” They have long been perplexed by these extensive strands of genetic material that dominate the genome but seem to lack specific functions. Why would nature force the genome to carry so much excess baggage? [...] http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S24/28/32C04/index.xml?section=topstories

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Our new paper in PLoS One: why we should sequence big genomes

By Michael Eisen | March 4, 2009

We have a new paper out in PLoS One that I think is particularly cool: Peterson BK*, Hare EE*, Iyer VN, Storage S, Conner L, et al. (2009) Big Genomes Facilitate the Comparative Identification of Regulatory Elements. PLoS ONE 4(3): e4688.  The paper is about species with big genomes – in particular species from the [...]

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Junk DNA Bad, Junk Gene Good

By Michael Eisen | November 10, 2008

A few weeks ago Carl Zimmer wrote a nice post at The Loom taking science writers to task for leaping at every chance to grab ahold of the “Wow! Junk DNA is not junk after all!” news hook. He correctly pointed out that we’ve known for years that non-coding DNA has lots of function, and [...]

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Scientists cynical use of "Junk DNA"

By Michael Eisen | September 4, 2008

This blog – like many others I presume – was started to give me a place to vent about a pet peeve. The target of my particular ire is the way that scientists who should know better continue to tout every new paper on the function of non-coding DNA as a new discovery that – [...]

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