Junk of Two Kinds

September 11, 2013 by joachim

Toward the end of  today’s lecture about Molecular Biology in the past 60 years (I suppose counting from the discovery of the structure of DNA, in 1953), Sydney Brenner explained the difference between junk kept and junk thrown away.  The latter is called garbage.  For instance, he kept boxes in which chemicals were shipped in his attic, to be used for building shelves at some future time.  So here was a distinct plan until his wife talked him out of it saying that he would never get to the point of building these shelves.  Her dictum transformed junk into garbage, to be thrown out.

The whole point of this diversion was to shine light onto the genome and its evolution.  Biology doesn’t have a plan.  Genes unused are not necessarily thrown away.  Evolution has a way of putting genetic material that has no purpose to good use in an unanticipated context.  Actin, without which eukaryotic cells would be unable to function, originates from a predecessr in  bacteria.  So this is the equivalent of Sydney’s boxes — things that might be useful some day.

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