The humped bladderwort has yellow, snapdragon-like flowers, and it’s actually carnivorous, capable of trapping and eating not just insects but even tadpoles and tiny fish. But this combination of beauty and death isn’t what makes the bladderwort special. Most organisms have loads of junk DNA — less pejoratively, noncoding DNA — cluttering their cells. The bladderwort doesn’t: 97 percent of its DNA is classic, hardworking, protein-building DNA. (More)
In humans, the reverse is true. The bladderwort also has more genes than we do ― at least if conventional science is to be believed.
The Humped Bladderwort sounds intense
The ENCODE project is going to be beneficial for many years to come. Seems to be pretty revolutionary
“But its leaders trumpeted one main finding above all: that 80 percent of noncoding DNA had some sort of biological function. This was like Columbus discovering five new continents at once—whole new worlds of unexpected genetic activity and potential therapeutic targets to exploit.”
I’d say so! It really seems that this might be a huge step for genetic medicine
Gather as man biologist and chemist as you can find, let’s start some R&D
Better start looking in other countries.
“Almost no new treatments have emerged, and there aren’t many in the pipeline, either.”
Opportunity is certainly there
So why does the bladderwort have so much active DNA when humans have relatively little?
“Noncoding DNA also offered new leads on curing diseases.”
Sounds like we need to be researching this a lot more
Encode has been-
“It cost $288 million and produced a supernova burst of 30 scientific papers last September, including an overview article in Nature with 442 co-authors.”
http://healthblog.ncpathinktank.org/the-other-side-of-the-gene-patent-debate/
^ There’s always a “downside”