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NOVAbuddy t1_j63i0oz wrote

Reply to comment by GoGaslightYerself in TIL that after scientists sequenced the genome of a tiger they found that it shares 95.6% of its DNA with the domestic cat, from which it diverged 10.8 million years ago. by countdookee

I always wonder if that junk DNA would do something if we still consumed for example, the Pleistocene megafauna. Like maybe if we ate paraceratherium liver our cells would have the molecular building blocks for our DNA make proteins we no longer have. What kind of organs and capabilities are locked up in that DNA that we can no longer access because we don’t have the raw inputs to make the code useful?

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GoGaslightYerself t1_j63jdhr wrote

> What kind of organs and capabilities are locked up in that DNA that we can no longer access because we don’t have the raw inputs to make the code useful?

I don't know and am not qualified to even guess. But being that so much of it is identical -- the same sequence repeated over and over (a million times in the case of Alu) -- I suspect it carries about as much useful information as a dial tone.

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