Zombie DNA Long Thought Dormant Can Rise to Cause Health Problems

so zombieism isn't death it is a genetic mutation. They are mutant freaks

Michael J. Fox is a zombie, KILL HIM!

Heehee

"a piece of junk DNA ("non-coding DNA" is the politically correct term)"

So....we have gotten to the sad point where we may offend DNA?? Are there lawyers out there ready to defend its rights? What about politicians ready to pass laws against discriminating against it?

Great!! If zombieism isn't death but instead a genetic mutation, does that mean upon the arrival of them we cant kill them? it will be called a disease and not thier fault?

Joking aside...if they can cause sudden and unexpected problems, could they also cause unexpected benefits?
Could the re-awakening of old, unused genes suddenly be a form of evolution?

Just speculating...or maybe just wishful thinking.

@CDales1004: Yes it could be, that is at once exciting and terrifing...I would rather not sprout gills

"Joking aside...if they can cause sudden and unexpected problems, could they also cause unexpected benefits?
Could the re-awakening of old, unused genes suddenly be a form of evolution?" of course... This is what the series Heroes is based on!

How about we awaken the genes used for regeneration of limbs and more importantly negligible senescence.

Negligible senescence is basically growing old without showing any negative signs of aging. Lobsters have them and so do some tortoises(torti?) which enables them to live indefinitely barring injury.. Basically being immortal within reason.

But you're on popsci so you already knew all that.

@bassIvemalls. No I did not know, thanks

@BassiveMalls: We already have the regeneration genes, and they're active. The "problem" is that we also have other genes that suppress the effects of the regenerative genes. To make matters more complicated, these suppressing genes are those that control blood clotting... so when we block the proteins that clot blood, we regenerate, but that also can lead to death by hemorrhage.

So take your pick: regenerate, but possibly bleed to death, or don't bleed to death but loose an arm. At the moment, these are the only choices, until we find another way (but it wouldn't be genetic).

Anyway, this does make a lot of sense. Genes are very sensitive to mutation. In a nutshell, most gene expression is controlled by separate regulator genes (which, interestingly, don't have to be anywhere near the original gene to still work). So if there's an old gene, but its regulators have mutated during evolution, it won't be active but will still be hanging around. A single mutation could be all it takes to "repair" the regulatory genes, thus "resurrecting" the old gene. When the old gene's proteins conflict with newer genes' proteins...well, we get problems. Problems like FSHD.

What would be more interesting is if there's a gene that, during evolution, was selected "out of commission", but with the evolution of newer genes, this old gene could be beneficial. In that case, a mutation allowing it to be transcribed would lead to an evolutionary advantage within the human race.

Interesting, but with modern medicine, and society's definition of "normal", I don't foresee physical evolution happening, nor any mental evolution besides intelligence improvements.

Meaning we'll end up super-smart, but physically the same. Great.

-IMP ;) :)

This is to Cdales the word politically correct is An oxymoron word. This is the definition of the word oxymoron(plural oxymorons or the Greek plural oxymora) (from Greek ὀξύμωρον, "sharp dull") is a figure of speech that combines normally-contradictory terms. Oxymorons appear in a variety of contexts, including inadvertent errors such as extremely average, deliberate puns like same difference or pretty ugly, and literary oxymorons crafted to reveal a paradox.

The term "zombie gene", coined by Boonsri Dickinson, is at least a clearly journalistic (and rather catchy...) nickname. This is contrary to "junk dna" that was originally meant by Susumu Ohno as a (totally wrong, doubted since its first utterance) scientific theory (Google: "Ohno 'Junk' DNA paper in full, 1972". He (mistakenly) argued that the human DNA can not contain more than 30,000 genes and the rest was there "for the importance of doing nothing" (p. 367).

The journalistic nickname "zombie gene" implies, and FractoGene (2002) as the theory that fractal DNA governs growth of fractal organelles, organs and organisms puts it into mathematical terms the basis of full (hologenome) function. "The Principle of Recursive Genome Function" (2008) (Google it for full free text and supporting materials in the web) enables both rendering genic sequences un-transcribable (by methylation) and provides the mechanism for perusing information from non-genic (formerly "junk") sequences.

"Recursive genome function" now fetches over 200,000 hits on Google...

Pellionisz_at_JunkDNA.com

benjerome...
I didn't ask what oxymoron meant.
I only referenced the sentence where "politically correct" was used as part of a lame joke.
But, I do appreciate the refresher in definition.
Thanks