Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.
BMC Biol. 2017 Dec 5;15(1):116. doi: 10.1186/s12915-017-0460-9.
The idea that much of our genome is irrelevant to fitness-is not the product of positive natural selection at the organismal level-remains viable. Claims to the contrary, and specifically that the notion of "junk DNA" should be abandoned, are based on conflating meanings of the word "function". Recent estimates suggest that perhaps 90% of our DNA, though biochemically active, does not contribute to fitness in any sequence-dependent way, and possibly in no way at all. Comparisons to vertebrates with much larger and smaller genomes (the lungfish and the pufferfish) strongly align with such a conclusion, as they have done for the last half-century.
我们的基因组大部分与适应度无关的观点——并非生物体层面正向自然选择的产物——仍然成立。与这一观点相反的说法，尤其是“垃圾 DNA”的概念应该被摒弃，这些说法基于对“功能”一词的混淆。最近的估计表明，我们的 DNA 中可能有 90%虽然具有生物化学活性，但不以任何序列依赖的方式或可能根本不以任何方式促进适应度。与基因组大得多和小得多的脊椎动物（肺鱼和河豚）进行比较强烈地支持了这样的结论，正如它们在过去半个世纪所做的那样。
