@farmerman,
Genetics - Epigenetics.
A quick overview of Epigenetics & "Junk DNA"
The two terms are not identical but both are related to mechanisms in the chromosome that regulate the expression of DNA protein codes.
The protein coding portion of DNA is only about 2 - 3 % of the content, the rest was declared "Junk" until relatively recently. Darwinists tried to use it as evidence that there is no design, just unused stuff which you would expect to be passed on from unguided evolution. The real answer is more mind bogglingly complex than anyone guessed. And we have just scratched the surface of this new field.
If you are familiar with computer science, you can think of the Protein coding portion as the machine language of the cell. The "Junk" is actually the higher level language ( think C or Fortran) that invokes the lower level language instructions.
I don't expect this will convince anyone of ID but it is just one more level of complexity that makes pure chance/natural selection evolution hard (for me at least) to accept as the only architect of life's design.
From Discover Magazine article ( NOT Discovery Institute)
Our DNA—specifically the 25,000 genes identified by the Human Genome Project—is now widely regarded as the instruction book for the human body. But genes themselves need instructions for what to do, and where and when to do it. A human liver cell contains the same DNA as a brain cell, yet somehow it knows to code only those proteins needed for the functioning of the liver. Those instructions are found not in the letters of the DNA itself but on it, in an array of chemical markers and switches, known collectively as the epigenome, that lie along the length of the double helix. These epigenetic switches and markers in turn help switch on or off the expression of particular genes. Think of the epigenome as a complex software code, capable of inducing the DNA hardware to manufacture an impressive variety of proteins, cell types, and individuals.
From Scientific American article
WHO
Ewan Birney
VOCATION | AVOCATION
“Cat herder in chief” of the ENCODE consortium of 400 geneticists from around the world
WHERE
European Bioinformatics Institute, Cambridge, England
RESEARCH FOCUS
Creating an encyclopedia detailing what the most mysterious parts of the human genome do
BIG PICTURE
“I get this strong feeling that previously I was ignorant of my own ignorance, and now I understand my ignorance.”
In the 1970s, when biologists first glimpsed the landscape of human genes, they saw that the small pieces of DNA that coded for proteins (known as exons) seemed to float like bits of wood in a sea of genetic gibberish. What on earth were those billions of other letters of DNA there for? No less a molecular luminary than Francis Crick, co-discoverer of DNA’s double-helical structure, suspected it was “little better than junk.”
The phrase “junk DNA” has haunted human genetics ever since. In 2000, when scientists of the Human Genome Project presented the first rough draft of the sequence of bases, or code letters, in human DNA, the initial results appeared to confirm that the vast majority of the sequence—perhaps 97 percent of its 3.2 billion bases—had no apparent function. The “Book of Life,” in other words, looked like a heavily padded text.
Now, in a series of papers published in September in Nature (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group) and elsewhere, the ENCODE group has produced a stunning inventory of previously hidden switches, signals and sign posts embedded like runes throughout the entire length of human DNA. In the process, the ENCODE project is reinventing the vocabulary with which biologists study, discuss and understand human inheritance and disease.
PS: You really think boats are less work than aircraft?
