Bravo, you deserve a round of applause for that. If memory serves it was you who brought up an RNA gene in the first place
Actually I am glad you brought it up and insisted on me pursuing these non-coding RNA genes. By the way, the Science News Online article I recommended mentions the RNA regulatory gene I brought up:
The researchers found that one of these sequences is a noncoding region of DNA that's related to brain function, they reported in the Sept. 14, 2006 Nature. Pollard and her colleagues speculate that this region produces a regulatory RNA and that changes in this RNA contributed to the evolution of the human brain.
With regulatory RNAs appearing to play such an instrumental role in animal development, it's no surprise that scientists are finding disease-associated mutations in regions of the genome formerly regarded as junk.
David Altshuler of the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Mass., and his colleagues looked for DNA mutations in 1,464 patients with type 2 diabetes. Three of the mutations that correlated with the disease were in DNA segments that don't code for proteins, the team reported in the June 1 Science. Other scientists have found mutations in noncoding DNA that link to diseases such as autism, breast cancer, lung cancer, prostate cancer, and schizophrenia.
In science you'd better be specific if you want to be meaningful. There's no statistics that can help you about vague questions.
Well yea and Google search engines can be a little unforgiving as well.
Just hang on, I really don't have a handle on it but I keep running into talk about splice sites. Mostly it's disease and disorder but RNA genes can splice other RNA genes. I realize I am talking in generalities here but it's just a germ of an idea I'm catching out of the corner of my eye.
All I want is that you support your arguments. By the way, the abstract doesn't say anything about the frequency of whatever type of mutations, so I don't know what point you want to make with it.
Generally discussions about mutations are anecdotal, particularly when they are discovering so many new things. I don't know if it was accidental but you actually hit on some pretty interesting stuff.
Mutations mostly do nothing at all, then the ones that have an affect are usually deleterious. Beneficial affects will be rare in the extreme and then usually only for a time. When your looking for adaptations I'm thinking random mutations are a dead end, can't really prove it yet but it still seems to be the case.
And then you continue with the article...
Do they say a word about beneficial mutations (or the lack thereof)? No. Therefore, irrelevant. If they have anything relevant to say I'd rather see that.
That 'these programs and mechanisms are perturbed in disease' doesn't tell us anything about what may happen without disease.
Like I said, they are not going to speculate about what might happen. What they will elaborate on at length is known affects and more importantly, what these non-coding RNA genes actually do.
At any rate, just wanted to tell you that what I thought was a wild goose chase turned out to be pretty interesting.
Thanks a bunch
Mark