When the human genome was first presented to the world it had many gaps in it, especially from regions where there were lots of repetitive sequences. These tended to be around the two ends of each chromosome, called telomeres, and around a region called the centromere, where the chromosomes are held together and then separated during cell division.
An international consortium of scientists has now sequenced a complete human genome that reveals the DNA code along each chromosome, from end to end without any gaps. Part of the project involved a detailed study of the centromeres and how they interact with proteins that control the movement of the chromosomes during cell division.
Nicolas Altemose, one of the researchers at University of California, Berkeley who led the study of the centromeres, commented: “Without proteins, DNA is nothing. DNA is a set of instructions with no one to read it if it doesn’t have proteins around to organize it, regulate it, repair it when it’s damaged and replicate it. Protein-DNA interactions are really where all the action is happening for genome regulation, and being able to map where certain proteins bind to the genome is really important for understanding their function.”
References: Science Alert 31 March 2022; BBC News 1 April 2022; SciTech Daily 3 April 2022; Nature Methods 8 April 2022, doi: 10.1038/s41592-022-01475-6
Editorial Comment: Altemose is right – DNA is of no use without proteins, and Creation Research has been saying this for decades. However, the proteins that organise, regulate and repair and DNA cannot exist without the code carried by the DNA. And to further complicate things, another molecule, RNA, is needed for the process of copying the code and using it to make proteins. Copying the code onto RNA also requires proteins, and many more proteins are needed to make proteins using the information on the RNA copies.
These complex, tight-knit interactions expose the folly of believing that life arose from small molecules randomly reacting with one another in some kind of primeval soup over millions of years. Unless the whole system of DNA, RNA and proteins is set up all together there can be no life. The more scientists study how DNA works the more proof there is of the Creator’s work, and the less excuse they have for failing to recognise it.
Creation Research News 13 April 2022
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