How comforting it is to know that even scientists can be so blithe in disparaging things they don't understand. And somehow frightening at the same time. Is the big bang really that big? Are dinosaurs going to turn out to be the size of titmice? What is there in our so-called knowledge that we can really depend on? Pluto's not even a planet. I mean!
Now that we are beginning to understand these out-of-category cells, they seem to be taking their revenge by redefining their respective categories.
Alex Ramos, for instance, a student at UC San Francisco, has found associations between junk DNA and diseases such as Huntinton's and Alzheimer's, seizures, depression and cancer.
The fun part is that Ramos's research resulted in so much data the university could not handle it on its own. So, in the spirit of openness, they created a website where any scientist can grab it and do their own investigations. “It should be of interest to scientists who study long noncoding RNA, the generation of new nerve cells in the adult brain, neural stem cells and brain development, and embryonic stem cells,” Ramos says.
All that from genetic junk. I wonder what secrets they'll find when they really get going.