DNA 'Knockouts' Reveal Genes Humans Don't Need (sciencemag.org)

sciencehabit writes: Although humans have about 20,000 genes, exactly what most of them do inside our body's cells is still murky. One way to learn more is to find people who lack a working copy of a particular gene and see how that affects their health. Such so-called knockouts are scarce in the general population. But a new study points to a more efficient way to find them: Search the DNA of people from a culture in which marrying a relative is common. The study has found a number of genes that we seemingly can do without, including those thought to prevent serious diseases. And one healthy mother completely lacked a gene called PRDM9 that is involved in shuffling chromosomes during the formation of eggs and sperm. Mice lacking the gene are sterile.

Comments

Sphagetti code

[sinij]

Our genome is spaghetti code of the worst kind. If God exists, he is horrible coder.

Re:Sphagetti code

[Wycliffe]

Our genome is spaghetti code of the worst kind. If God exists, he is horrible coder.

Looking at the genome (or our brain) to understand how it works is kindof like looking at the end result of a neural net or genetic algorithm. The millions of random mutations get the right result based on the selection criteria (in this case survival). The animal world has plenty of extreme macroscopic examples of this whether it is extremely painful reproduction, deadly reproduction, insane impractical appendages, it doesn't really matter as long as your generation "wins". Some AI scientists have tried to reverse engineer relatively simple code generated by genetic algorithms and have found stuff that as far as they can tell shouldn't even work but exploits some small loophole in either the code, the hardware, or the selection criteria. When I was in HS, I did some GA stuff that failed miserably at midnight because the bots were taking advantage of minor variations in the random number generator and those assumptions failed as soon as the day changed. Our genome is this times a million. The number of flukes, switchbacks, random hacks, and things that shouldn't work but manage to because of some other random mutation is probably mind-boggling.

Re:Sphagetti code

[PvtVoid]

Horrible from a human perspective. He is transcendent, we are just too dumb to understand the inner beauty.

That's what I tell people about my code all the time.

Re:Sphagetti code

[Zeio]

NO.

Its called epigenetics and three dimension conformation and methylation groups.

Gene expression relies on both methylation, epigenetics (inheritable - this is big as experience and environment can create gene expression changes that are passed to offspring) and three dimensional configuration of "useless genes" have an effect on gene expression.

Your notion of double helix and guanine tyrosine adensosine cytosine and uracil for thymine in RNA being simple "code" is absurd, disproved and ridiculous.

Removal of ""useless"" codons WILL change gene expression and cause huge problems which are not able to be predicted.

I noticed that most of the domain specific jargon words I'm using aren't showing up as known in Chrome so the world is not, according to the bulk data spell correction, even thinking about this issue of methylation, epigenetics and DNA codons and gene expression correctly.

Re:Sphagetti code

[Tablizer]

Our genome is spaghetti code of the worst kind. If God exists, he is horrible coder.

It's been obfuscated for security. He/she doesn't want humans mucking with it.

Re:value of the "million genome project"

[sinij]

Next combine this with metadata gathered by NSA, and we could know exactly whom to show penis enlargement adds.

Then again

[choke]

You can remove half the parts of my diesel engine. It'll work .. until the set of conditions that the specific part is intended to address occur at which time it will fail. Sometimes dramatically.

The human system is significantly more complex than my diesel engine, and the set of conditions that it encounters are significantly more complex as well.

The thought that ignorance of fact is evidence of fact is appalling. That we don't know what a part does, in no way indicates anything other than our own lack of understanding.

Plot twist

[wardrich86]

Plot twist: The genomes they lack are the ones that keep the rest of us from wanting to marry our siblings and cousins. Could this be the beginning of the end?

Defense in-depth

[ThatsNotPudding]

What one fool would call 'junk DNA', the ox-slow grinding of disease and toxins would call a chance for a few members of the species to survive a near-extinction event.

there is a lot we don't need

[Gravis Zero]

there is a lot of DNA that encodes for stuff we don't need... until we do. you could remove lots of genes that are only active under certain conditions if you can be sure you will never meet those conditions. however, the optimal evolutionary pattern is to hedge your bets.

Jumping to conclusions?

[kheldan]

I'm under the impression that much (if not all) of the so-called 'junk DNA' that seemingly does nothing, is more like 'error handling' or 'conditional' code that rarely, if ever, gets activated -- but that might save our lives. For instance, a recent Slashdot story: Viral 'Fossils' In Our DNA May Help Us Fight Infection

interesting but not quite what you think

[ooloorie]

Most of our genes don't do much of anything most of the time. But that's true of many things in our environment. Car analogy? I can sabotage your headlights, your seat belts, your rear seats, your locks, your airbags, your dome lights, your climate control, your emission filters and catalytic converter and... you might not even notice until months later. That doesn't mean that those items don't have any function.

In fact, large numbers of genes probably exist only to be used when you are sick or environmentally stressed. Many other genes give you redundant functionality, or functionality that individually only increases your performance on some task a little bit. Many genes have significant effects only in the brain, where it is very hard to find differences.

Don't get me wrong: the information that some gene can be deleted without being lethal is useful information. But it doesn't mean that you "don't need them".