Transcriptional Noise: “We Once Thought it Was So Simple …”

Don’t Bet Against the House

Everyone has heard of the famous DNA macromolecule where our genes reside, but less well known is its cousin, the RNA macromolecule. Two different molecular machines produce copies of DNA for two different reasons. One machine copies the entire double helix for the purpose of duplicating the genome before the cell divides into two daughter cells. The other machine merely transcribes one of the two strands in the double helix, and only for a relatively short segment. This copy, or transcript, is an RNA, not DNA, molecule. If you remember only one thing about RNA it probably is that the RNA transcript is passed to the ribosome machine which translates RNA’s string of nucleotides into a string of amino acids which will become a new protein. For many years that was thought to be the main function of RNA—to carry information like a messenger from the DNA gene to the ribosome. Now, in spite of evolutionary theory, that has all changed.

One of the first hints of a problem came when it was discovered that, in higher organisms, those all-important genes (according to evolutionary theory) comprised only a few percent of the genome. That didn’t fit very well with evolution’s gene-centric view, so consequently much of that huge non genic portion of the genome was often taken as functionless—the so-called “junk” DNA.

The next hint of a problem came when it was discovered that much of this non genic DNA was transcribed. This, it seemed, conferred to the non genic DNA a status on par with that of the genes. For if it was useless DNA, then why would it be transcribed? Again, that didn’t fit very well with evolution’s gene-centric view, so much of that massive transcription effort was “dismissed as transcriptional noise,” as a report out this week explains.

Now, the next problem is that not only is the vast majority of the genome not made up of genes, and not only is most of those non genic portions transcribed, but those non genic portions, which come in a variety of forms, inevitably seem to turn out to be functional. In fact, the whole operation is “enormously complex.”

Darwin viewed much of biology as inefficient or useless and evolutionists ever since have followed his lead. But it’s dangerous to bet against nature. From rudimentary and “vestigial” organs to “junk” DNA and transcriptional “noise,” evolutionist’s interpretations continue to need, well, reinterpretation.