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Biotech / Medical : Biotech Valuation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ian@SI who wrote (2992)	2/26/2001 1:54:30 PM
From: Lighthouse	Respond to of 52153

Ridley's book is an easy read. Way too simplistic for most truly informed scientists, but nice reading for us lay people. I believe Ridley and others postulate that large, but not all, sections of the whole genome are pure "junk" (no compelling metabolic purpose to the entity). According to the author and others as well, very large regions of the genome are present simply becuase they are very good at replicating themselves. There are other areas of the raw code where it looks like past retro-viruses have inserted code merely because they could. If these code sections are useless and do not interfere with natural selection, then there would be no reason for editing it out. Again those regions look like pure junk for making stuff. (Unless a good vector can be modified from it?). That still leaves a lot of code that nobody knows what it does. Regulatory regions will take a long time to elucidate and lots of expression analysis information (databases and arrays). And if each "gene" does "code" for possibly three of more proteins, then the regulatory regions will turn from junk to gold rather fast. I agree that the real winners in all this will be the LEXG's, and RSTA's of the world. Hard to see how they lose. A further question is: Does CRA and INCY make a move into this field in a deeper way by purchasing these entities? Take the above with a major grain of salt as the author has been humbled more times than the Chicage Cubs. Cheers,

To: Ian@SI who wrote (2992)	2/26/2001 1:59:56 PM
From: Biomaven	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 52153

Ian, My guess is that most of the junk DNA is indeed "commented out code" and other artifacts of the evolutionary process. Looking at the big picture, though, a part of the picture is not just what genes presently reside in the genome, but also what genes potentially reside in it after some mutations down the road. It may well be that a portion of the junk DNA has long-term significance - it may help determine the long-term evolution of the species. (Likely an aspect that pharmas and biotechs don't care much about). However, I'll bet there are indeed some crucial hidden jewels tucked away amidst the "junk DNA." Talk about needle in a haystack, though ... Peter (But remember that I'm a layman here too...)