> > I know you're just playing here but it would be easy to empirically test > this. Does junk DNA change between birth and death? Something tells me we > would have discovered something that significant a long time ago. > > Terren
well, loads of mutations occur in nuclear DNA between birth and death; this is part of how aging occurs. There are specific DNA repair mechanisms that fix mutation errors that occur during the cell's lifetime It seems quite plausible that these repair mechanisms might work differently on coding and noncoding regions of the DNA ben g p.s. hmm.. relatedly, there is debatable evidence that in some cases there can be acquired mutations http://home.planet.nl/~gkorthof/kortho39.htm related to immune function, and some of these may be in genes and some not... ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=120640061-aded06 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
