CONSIDER THE EVIDENCE

What the "Junk" Does

A factory that makes cars uses machines to manufacture the parts. We can liken the parts to the proteins in a cell. The factory also needs devices and systems that assemble those parts step-by-step and others that serve as controls, or regulators, in the assembly line.  The same is true of the activities inside the cell. And that, say researchers, is where "junk" DNA comes in. Much of it contains the recipe for a class of complex molecules called regulatory RNA (ribonucleic acid), which play a key role in how the cell develops, matures and functions.  The sheer existence of these exotic regulators," says mathematical biologist Joshua Plotkin in Nature magazine, "suggests that our understanding about the most basic things . . .  is incredibly naive." 

An efficient factory additionally needs effective communication systems, the same is true of the cell. Tony Pawson a cell biologist  at the University of Toronto in Ontario, explains: "The signaling information in cells is organized through networks of information rather than simple discrete pathways," making the whole process "infinitely more complex" than previously  thought.  Indeed, as a geneticist at Princeton University said, "many of the mechanisms and principles governing inter-and intracellular behavior are still a mystery."

Each new discovery about the cell points to ever higher levels of order and sophistication.  So why do so many people still cling to the notion that life and the most sophisticated information system known to a man are products of a random evolutionary process? 

Next time: WHICH APPROACH IS MORE REASONABLE

From the AWAKE! magazine, 2011