A Fake Headline, and a Real One, About DNA
https://scienceandculture.com/2025/11/a-fake-headline-and-a-real-one-about-dna/
displays meaning for formerly thought junk DNA
November
3, 2025
My Google
News feed thought I would be interested in an article on Yahoo News titled “Human
DNA detected in 2 billion year old meteorite.” So I checked out the story
and it’s fake news. No DNA, much less human DNA, was detected in a meteorite.
Instead, we found very simple compounds which everyone already knew are common
in meteorites. Here’s what you read in the story after you scroll pass the fake
headline:
NASA’s and
Japan’s missions both returned pieces of ancient asteroids to Earth. Inside the
asteroids researchers have found carbon, ammonia, salts, and even amino acids,
which are the molecules that make up proteins. In January 2025, scientists said
OSIRIS-REx’s samples contained 14 of the 20 amino acids used by life on Earth,
plus chemical precursors of DNA and RNA.
Great,
but No Surprises There
And while it
may sound impressive about the 14 of the 20 amino acids used by life, you can
almost rest assured that they are a racemic mixture of both right and left
handed amino acids and, as Jim
Tour recently showed, they won’t be linking up into long polymer
chains.
But if you
read the article, there is an interesting admission:
“Bennu is
basically a pantry full of ingredients,” said Dr. Jason Dworkin, NASA’s lead
scientist on the OSIRIS-REx mission. “But it wasn’t quite the right conditions
to make a cake. On Earth, we have cake, and we don’t know why.”
Did you get
that? “Cake,” I believe, is supposed to mean life. So obviously on earth we
have cake. And this lead NASA scientist is admitting we don’t know why there is
life on earth. So the article might be bluffing about the discovery of human
DNA in a meteorite, but at least it goes on to admit we don’t understand how
life arose on earth. Very interesting!
The
“Geometric Code”
Meanwhile, I
also got an email from a science professor in our network about another news
headline titled “Scientists
uncover hidden ‘geometric code’ that helps DNA compute and remember.” This
seems to be a real story because it’s based upon a study done by scientists at
Northwestern University published in the journal Advanced Science,
titled “Geometrically
Encoded Positioning of Introns, Intergenic Segments, and Exons in the Human
Genome.”
According to
the news story, biologists have discovered a “second language” in our DNA that
isn’t based upon the precise sequence of bases but rather upon the structural
shape of the DNA molecule — as the story puts it “a second language built on
geometry rather than chemistry.” Here’s how the finding is described:
Led by
biomedical engineer Vadim Backman, the study reveals that DNA’s 3D physical
structure holds a “geometric code” — a system that allows cells to compute,
remember and adapt.
Essentially,
the idea is that the three-dimensional shape of the chromosomes is vital to
modulate and control many genomic processes such as gene transcription. Parts
of genes which may be distant in one dimension on a chromosome can be brought
close together due to the three-dimensional “packing” of chromosomes in the
nucleus, creating “functional packing layers of domains” also called “packing
domains” (PDs). From the technical paper:
[I]ntrons
and intergenic segments are coupled to adjacent exons to generate coherent
packing domain volumes … We wish to propose a radical hypothesis — described
within this work — that nanoscale packing geometry is encoded in the
positioning of exons, introns, and intergenic segments as projections of the
functional layers of PDs [packing domains] …
This idea
that the three-dimensional shapes of chromosomes are important for controlling
genome function is receiving more and more attention in the literature. Earlier
this year I discussed (see here and here)
how much of the newly
discovered DNA that is different between humans and chimps has been
found to be “non-B” DNA — often repetitive DNA — where the number of
copies of repeats control the 3D structural shape of chromosomes, and the 3D
shape of chromosomes helps regulate genome function. This means that even
repetitive DNA is functionally important in shaping chromosome structure, which
is very important for creating these “domains” of genome regulation.
If You’re
Catching the Drift…
All of this
has direct and negative implications for the idea of “junk DNA” because it
suggests that huge amounts of our DNA may be functionally important for
controlling chromosomal architecture.
In fact, the
implications of this model for junk DNA were made explicit in a 2019 paper
in BioEssays that I reported
on which found that the GC content of chromosomes helps define
topologically associating domains (TADs). These TADs bring parts of chromosomes
spatially near one another in the nucleus in order to regulate things like gene
transcription. The paper calls GC-content based code a “genomic code,” and
finds it has important implications against the idea of junk DNA:
[T]he
genomic code, which is responsible for the pervasive encoding and molding of
primary chromatin domains (LADs and primary TADs, namely the “gene
spaces”/“spatial compartments”) resolves the longstanding problems of
“non-coding DNA,” “junk DNA,” and “selfish DNA” leading to a new vision of the
genome as shaped by DNA sequences.
Now, this
new paper in Advance Sciences adds to the body of evidence
showing that the 3D shape of chromosomes is vital to creating chromosomal
“domains” that interact to produce things like gene transcripts. The fact that
they are calling it a “geometric code,” which is “a second language built on
geometry rather than chemistry,” shows just how important the three-dimensional
architecture of chromosomes is in regulating genome function.
Casey Luskin
is a geologist and an attorney with graduate degrees in science and law, giving
him expertise in both the scientific and legal dimensions of the debate over
evolution. He earned his PhD in Geology from the University of Johannesburg,
and BS and MS degrees in Earth Sciences from the University of California, San
Diego, where he studied evolution extensively at both the graduate and
undergraduate levels. His law degree is from the University of San Diego, where
he focused his studies on First Amendment law, education law, and environmental
law.
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