Re: We believe in design

>There was a fascinating article in Scientific American a few
> months back which suggested that the so-called "junk" DNA may have
> been pivotal in evolution. It showed a graph of the complexity of
> organism vs the amount of junk DNA showing a monotonic increase in
> it. It suggested that we don't yet know the function of the non-
> coding DNA, but this would be a fruitful area of research.<

The graph was highly selective to get a montonic increase. There are
increases in DNA amount that coincide closely with some increases in
complexity; however, these may reflect large-scale duplication events
that copy genes as well as junk DNA. However, there are closely
related organisms with significantly higher amounts of DNA and no
evident difference in complexity, etc. I think an amoeba holds the
record for amount of DNA, and some salamanders have extremely high
levels among the vertebrates.

-- 
Dr. David Campbell
425 Scientific Collections Building
Department of Biological Sciences
Biodiversity and Systematics
University of Alabama, Box 870345
Tuscaloosa AL 35487-0345  USA