[FRIAM] tangent from uncanny valley
David Eric Smith
desmith at santafe.edu
Mon Jan 25 12:20:13 EST 2021
It’s good that Marcus said specifically “doesn’t express as proteins”, because that can capture both the small fraction that does, and the fact that indeed, the word “junk” is now rather characteristically embarrassing. At the least, we have small regulatory RNAs of several kinds (I am not a specialist in this), and probably elaborate regions for the control of gene expression modulated by many transcription factors. I feel sure that somewhere I have seen a paper with a graph to the effect that the number of regulatory (SOMETHING: what? sites? protein-protein interactions?) grows quadratically in the number of protein-coding exons. I know Peter Stadler in Leipzig has worked in this area a lot, but I have asked, and that paper is not by him.
I believe I have also seen that spatial proximity in the nucleus is relevant to regulation of rates and coordination of gene expression. Proximity in space may come from proximity in a chromosomal sequence, but can also be non-local on the chromosome. Erez Lieberman, perhaps 15 years ago or longer, when he was working at Martin Nowak’s Program for Evolutionary Dynamics at Harvard, was using new imaging methods to identify what the proximity arrangements were for transcribed regions, to conclude that they were reproducible, and then to work toward how that was being controlled when they were not necessarily contiguous in sequence.
Eric
> On Jan 25, 2021, at 11:09 AM, Barry MacKichan <barry.mackichan at mackichan.com> wrote:
>
> There used to be a lot of talk about “junk DNA” which doesn’t do anything, but I’ve gotten the impression (sorry, I can’t give references) that more recently the “junk DNA” does play a role.
>
> Also, adjacency or propinquity of genes on a chromosome affects evolution (if I get one of the genes from a parent, I’m highly likely to get the other also). I have no idea if it plays a role during the life of a cell. I don’t know anything about how sexual reproduction goes about building a new chromosome by selecting pieces from the chromosomes of the parents, but on the face of it, changing the layout (or in mathematical terms, the metric) could lead to omission or duplication errors in the result.
>
> TL;DR Be careful what you wish for.
>
> —Barry
>
>
> On 22 Jan 2021, at 18:37, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>
> Most of the human genome doesn't express as proteins, so there should be lots of room to store stuff.
> Such technology is hardly science fiction, it's even FDA approved!
>
> https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-approves-novel-gene-therapy-treat-patients-rare-form-inherited-vision-loss <https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-approves-novel-gene-therapy-treat-patients-rare-form-inherited-vision-loss>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Prof David West
> Sent: Friday, January 22, 2021 2:43 PM
> To: friam at redfish.com
> Subject: [FRIAM] tangent from uncanny valley
>
> The idea of posthuman came up (yes it was me) in another thread. This article https://www.nature.com/articles/s41589-020-00711-4 <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41589-020-00711-4> opens an interesting door: "reprogramming" DNA by inserting new data into living DNA. After all a program is just another form of data. This might be orthogonal to genetic (re)engineering.
>
> davew
>
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