Our genetic code?

Question

I have read somewhere that only 2% of our genetic code is for survival and the rest is useless, is this true? oh and what the rest of the 98% of our genetic code is used for?

Answer 1

I'm not sure about the statistics but no way is it considered useless. At the moment, it may seem useless but it may also just be that we haven't discovered their use.

Answer 2

I wouldn't be so sure of the stats, especially the 2%. But I do know that during transcription and translation processes to make new mRNA from a DNA strand for protein synthesis in humans, there are parts called exons which actually code for the protein, and introns which do not code for the protein- they are cut out by spliceosomes. Scientists do not know what the introns are for, but there is increasing evidence that introns are used for regulatory functions in the body, because if we look at the correlation between the number of introns and the species we are looking at, humans have more introns in their genes than say chimpanzees or rats.

Answer 3

well, i don't know about the percentages but it's definitely true that we have a lot of useless DNA and amino acid sequences, like tandem repeats, and they're not even 100% sure of the functions of telomeres.

the things about these 'useless' sequences is that we are finding other uses for them. For example, with tandem repeats, it's a continuous repetition of bases such as ACGACGACGACG, but these actually determine things like 'how related' certain species are to each other (as in taxonomy) or can be used for paternity tests.

I guess it's kind of like with the brain, we only use a small fraction of it, but the 'useless' stuff gets new uses as we advance.

Answer 4

Be careful of what you read and where you read it.  It's often untrue or of no validity.

I wouldn't go re-enineering the human genome quite yet.