RNA-only genes

The origin of species?

A recently discovered class of gene may help regulate embryonic development, control the differences between body tissues and even drive animal evolution

See article

Readers' comments




I am ignorant of biology, but I never believed for a moment that 99% of our DNA was "junk".

Isn't it amazing how often arrogance takes the place of a proper humility in the face of ignorance?

Sierkovitz in reply to bampbs

This whole "junk DNA" thing is rather a result of pop-sci reporting, than research itself. I don't really recall any significant claims on uselessness of noncoding DNA (the 99%). It was rather always assumed it does have function, albeit a subtle one. Some sequences in our genome are obvious junk, but that we have known for some time. But if anyone discards a sequence we have no idea about as genetic garbage, treat such opinions with caution.


The idea that 99% of DNA is "junk" has never made any sense to me. The focus on protein production was kind of bad science in that it never explained the obviously required mechanisms for controlling those processes. Producing proteins without a control mechanism is not likely to result in a viable live creature and yet scientists mostly ignored the issue as far as I can tell. When I asked a biologist scientist about this he kind of brushed-aside the issue. I wonder what is still out there to be discovered!


It sounds almost like an ecosystem inside the nucleus. How many nucleic acids does it take to create a protein? One to code for it, and ten to argue about it.

Eusebius Pamphili

"For it is still the case that, more than a century and a half after Charles Darwin published “On the Origin of Species”, biologists do not fully understand how species actually do originate."

~ Nor do they know how the first cell managed to form "emphasis added". Dawkins, is a transpermiest! I wouldn't have believed it had I not heard him say it myself.


Well the genetic switches would play a major role in differentiation and therefor the development of the physical form as an embryo


The next big thing will by pytochemicals and their overthrow of what we thought we new about nutrition and health, adelphi university, the last hunter gatherer tribe in Ecuador, and vegetables are bad for you (what you really want to be eating is fruits!)


Sean Carroll (the geneticist, not the physicist of the same name) predicted something like this in a comment piece in one of the PLoS journals a decade or so ago.

Terence Hale

Evolution is the most talked about subject around. The loneliness of the long distance scientist talking on the spot, we have not come very far. What was the signal that made us not to swim craw or walk on four foot why we are not “slugs and snails and puppy dog tails”? Is it beyond the gene?

A. Andros

Amazing, really! Our understanding of speciation and, indeed, of evolution itself, seems to be advancing out of the set-in-concrete model of the Modern Synthesis. If we allow that natural selection is what disciplines evolution, it now has to crack its whip over an increasing number of agents of change in the genotype: random mutation by exterior sources (e.g. solar radiation); recombination; random genetic drift; epigenetics (possibly) and now the "jumper" RNA! It is an exciting time and one can sense that the mechanism of evolution is far more subtle than most of us allowed even a decade ago. Perhaps in a generation or so we will have new synthesis that ties all of this together but, Boy!, won't that be worthy of a Nobel Prize!

Dov Henis

Rethink, recomprehend life, genome, genetics beyond the dictates of the religious trade-union AAAS:

Earth Life
In plain English, not in academEnglish verbiage.

- Earth life, self-replicating mass format, is just another naturally selected mass format.
- The primal base organisms of Earth life are the genes, i.e. the RNA nucleotides.
- All Earth life formats are progenies of genes evolution.
- Genomes are organisms evolved, and continuously modified, by the genes as their functional templates.
- Genetics is a progeny of culture, which is reaction to circumstances.
- The drive and goal of evolution of ALL mass formats is to enhance their energy constraint, to postpone their reconversion to energy, which goes on at constant rate since the Big Bang.

Dov Henis (comments from 22nd century)


I think living systems are so complicated, people, human beings will never really figure out how they work. I still think it is a good idea to try and figure it all out, but when all is said and done, I suspect our explanations will prove woefully inadequate. I am a religious person, though to be honest, I don't know exactly what kind. I like Christianity, and Taoism too. But when I study evolution, I honestly don't think about religion at all. I guess that is a good thing.


I am an unqualified non-scientist who likes to read about genetics and evolution. In 1996 I wrote a letter to a geneticist suggesting that at least some of evolution was spread as a contagion, with retroviruses being the vector. I got an "interesting idea, but no known mechanism" response. This article is a step in that direction.

A contagion theory explains a number of oddities of evolution: 1)mutations and new speciation appear "lumpy" rather than spread evenely over time, 2)mutations could spread through most or all of a species (creating a new one)in just one generation, 2)it could explain why species are so discrete, without an array of intermediate

teacup775 in reply to A. Andros

Still hidden much from view though was the notion of the selection pressure. Mr D himself placed more prominence on sexual selection on speciation in contrast to enviromenal selection. Variations presenting themselves, which this nifty rna type produces, is only the raw material chosen from. Trying to find food is tough, trying to get a chick to mate with you is harder (on the guys).

The new rna type is neat for a lot of reasons. First off it, implies a more structured "punctuated" means to mutation, getting around some of the issues of gradulaism presumed from simple random mutation. If a twitchy retro virus can add encoding for limb development, then next week add attena by inserting the homeobox for it in the embryonic development sequence, well, you get the idea. Genes that make "appendage" can show up, all modular like overnight.

And we can also say that God is a retro virus, and that they are pretty smart.


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