This Statement is true. At least 75% of the human genome is useless. New work by biologists at the University of Houston suggests that a maximum of 25% of the human genome is functional. The Other 75 per cent is known as " junk DNA ".
This 75 % does not play a part in crucial chemical reactions in our body. The ENCODE Project suggested that roughly 80 % of our DNA is used. Professor Dan Graur of Biochemistry stated that about 10 to 15 % of the Human Genome is functional and the upper limit is 25 %. He came to his conclusion by looking at how mutations affect a population's DNA. A mathematical model he built allowed him to calculate the mutational load (the genetic load of a population that stems from the accumulation of bad mutations). Graur was successful in his stages of research and then he was able to conclude that the 80 % functionality of the genome proposed by ENCODE scientists is extremely unrealistic. He said
For 80% of the human genome to be functional, each couple in the world would have to beget on average 15 children and all but two would have to die or fail to reproduce,” writes Graur. “If we use the upper bound for the deleterious mutation rate (2 × 10−8 mutations per nucleotide per generation), then … the number of children that each couple would have to have to maintain a constant population size would exceed the number of stars in the visible universe by ten orders of magnitude."
Some may wonder why is it important to know the fact that 75 % of a DNA is useless. Well, Professor Dan Graur answers that question too.
“We need to know the functional fraction of the human genome in order to focus biomedical research on the parts that can be used to prevent and cure disease,”
said Graur. There is no need to sequence everything under the sun. We need only to sequence the sections we know are functional.
The world keeps evolving and we as a race will keep evolving too. To study what happens to the 75% of useless DNA makes a massive part of the study of evolution.
SOURCES:-
Google Search, Google, www.google.co.in/search?q=DNA.
Ratner, Paul. “75% Of the Human Genome Is Junk DNA, Claims New Research.” Big Think, Big Think, 30 July 2017, bigthink.com/paul-ratner/75-of-the-human-genome-is-junk-dna-claims-new-research.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXdzuz5Q-hs
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