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Q J Med 2004; 97: 243-244
QJM vol. 97 no. 4 (c) Association of Physicians 2004; all rights reserved.

Biologic

Junk, bricolage or ‘objets de virtue’?

Colin Berry

The first 10% of the full text of this article appears below.

It is an intriguing fact that while the complexity of organisms does not correlate with the number of protein coding genes they possess (Drosophila has less than a nematode, rice has more than Man), the amount of non-coding DNA scales with complexity. Protein coding sequences account for around only 2% of human chromosomal DNA, although a considerable further chunk produces RNA only. These latter ‘genes’ do not have stop and start codons, and vary so much that they cannot be picked up by computer programmes, so quantification is difficult.

As we have seen before, comparisons are helpful in deciding about the significance of genetic information. Computer-driven comparisons of twelve species, including Man, found 1194 . . . [Full Text of this Article]


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