“Junk DNA” No More: Repetitive Elements as Vital Sources of Flatworm Variation

Okay, well then what prevents innumerable other organisms from having lots of junk? If all you’re saying is there is merely “a correlation” between non-coding DNA and organismal complexity that does not preclude lots of junk-DNA, but there could be lots and lots of exceptions to this correlation and you have no idea what proportion of the total DNA content that is junk or functional, then what are you even arguing?

Still no idea what you’re talking about. What could be objected to? What could not?

On a related note, humans are exceptionally well-studied even compared to other model organisms, so it should not be much of a surprise that more “distinct cell types” are recognized for ourselves compared to most other species. But there does not seem to be any reason why we actually would contain more distinct cell types than innumerable other large multicellular animals. Why should the human organism need more different cell types compared to many other organisms that live in the same environments and eat basically all the same things we do? This idea that homo sapiens sits at the top of whatever measure of organismal complexity is completely without support.

Note that the axes of the graph have exactly zero to do with number of cell types, and that even the colored areas are ambiguously labeled and aren’t really discrete. The actual correlation shown on that graph is between quantity of non-coding DNA (y axis) and genome size (x axis). Is it any surprise at all that there’s a tight relationship? The colored areas are merely superimposed on the actual graph, but represent neither axis. Note how the numbers even overlap.

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