ENCODE: Encyclopedia Of DNA Elements

ENCODE, the Encyclopaedia of DNA Elements, is the most ambitious human genetics project to date. It takes the 3 billion letters described by the Human Genome Project in 2000, and tries to explain them. Remarkably, ENCODE scientists have managed to assign a biochemical function to 80% of the genome, including the genes and the parts of the genome that tell those genes what to do. This information is helping us understand how genomes are interpreted to make different types of cells and different people -- and crucially, how mistakes can lead to disease. In this video, ENCODE's lead coordinator, Ewan Birney, and Nature editor Magdalena Skipper talk about the challenges of managing this colossal project and what we've learnt about our genomes.

To read the research papers and more, visit www.nature.com/ENCODE

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  Science & Technology

[rumraket38]

They do that exactly because they haven't studied the subject, and aren't actually aware of the important details of this work(activity is expected, ENCODE found activity, but activity does not mean functional), which they mistakenly think supports claims they have made, when it actually does no such thing. And I have now explained why, though it's hard to do in detail in youtube comments. Here's an excellent, more detailed article selab.janelia.org/publications­/Eddy12/Eddy12-preprint.pdf

[rumraket38]

And as it turns out, ENCODE only found activity(and the level of activity in most of the DNA they found, was EXTREMELY low, which is another prediction of *active* but nonfunctional junk-DNA) in the DNA regions studies. But we EXPECT activity. But, this being science, and ENCODE wanting to get publicity, changed the definitions in their press-releases and started calling it functional. This is highly misleading, and creationists and their ilk are latching unto it in huge numbers.

[rumraket38]

Actually, encode didn't find functionality of for almost any of the DNA claimed in their title, they found *activity*. If you knew anything about the subject you'd know there's an extremly importand distinction between being active and being functional. I can go to my workplace and look active, that doesn't mean I'm doing anything worthwhile. It's the same with DNA, some of it can be transcribed into mRNA(which is even expected for DNA without real function), it doesn't mean it has a function.

[benthemiester]

Well then again you do not understand that the chance probability factor (which you cited as evidence) is based on the outdated notion that these insertions are random, and the discovery of specific and preferred target sites puts a dent into this notion. Again this is what is meant by using caution. I addition to the first two studies also cited additional study that spoke of incongruities concerning phylogenetic inferences. My point is that using ERV's as evidence for CA is not a smoking gun.

[benthemiester]

Well then again you do not understand that the chance probability factor (which you cited as evidence) is based on the outdated notion that these insertions are random, and the discovery of specific and preferred target sites puts a dent into this notion. Again this is what is meant by using caution. I addition to the first two studies also cited additional study that spoke of incongruities concerning phylogenetic inferences. My point is that using ERV's as evidence for CA is not a smoking gun.