Don't Be Duped By 'Duon' DNA Hype
forbes.com
Here’s some of the hype with a soupçon of garble.
For over 40 years we have assumed that DNA changes affecting the genetic code
solely impact how proteins are made,” said Stamatoyannopoulos. “Now we know that
this basic assumption about reading the human genome missed half of the picture.
These new findings highlight that DNA is an incredibly powerful information
storage device, which nature has fully exploited in unexpected ways.”
Scientists have not assumed that the genetic code “was used exclusively to write information about proteins,” or even ever assumed that it “writes information about proteins,” whatever that means. A quick primer: Proteins are molecules that do the work of an organism, and that includes the work of copying DNA for protein production and cell division.
Even nonmajors biology textbooks cover the fact that the DNA sequence both contains code for proteins and serves a regulatory purpose, making it possible to copy that code into a form the cell can read, recipe-like, to build the proper protein. We even have names for these regulatory DNA sequences: promoters, enhancers, termination sequences. (edited) I’d be stunned if UW scientists were genuinely “stunned” to discover this dual use of DNA sequences to “write” “two separate languages” because what they really describe is the use of a single language, the language of nucleotides, for two known purposes. They themselves noted that “the potential for some coding exons to accommodate transcriptional enhancers or splicing signals has long been recognized.” |
