Hello , I m confused by the plethora of information about Humane Genes online, Some say there is a difference between Non-Coding DNA and Junk DNA, some say there is NOT. I read it in rationalwiki Non-coding DNA" refers to portions of the genome that don't code for proteins, the Rest are Junk. As it says -
"Non-coding DNA" refers to portions of the genome that don't code for proteins...Protein-coding and non-coding DNA (known functional DNA) make up about 8.7% of the human genome, and 65% of the rest is known junk. It is assumed that the unknown 26.3% is most likely junk — geneticists and ENCODE project members differ in that ENCODE tends to assume functionality as a null hypothesis (ironically, so do creationists) and real scientists assume non-functionality"
what about Pseudogenes and JUNK RNA, are they Non-Coding or Junk ? Someone pls clarify these thing in layman term.
The term 'junk' was never really that great. All nucleotides occupy volume and have an associated electromagnetic potential - they contribute to the overall structure and folding of the DNA molecule. So, technically, from a quantum chemical point of view, the entire molecule is functional to some degree.
The 'junk' alludes to how / why humans have evolved to be the people that we are. Our genomes sacrificed some amount of maintenance / control long ago. What we got was a more 'fluid' genome that could produce diverse proteins and non-coding RNA.
AFAIK "Junk" is a catch-all term that means "we don't know what this sequence does yet"