Tuesday, January 23, 2018

Genetic Heritage

There are kits available to test your DNA.

I did mine. 60% Irish, 22% English-Scot, 11% Scandinavian and the rest traces of middle European.

Eighteen years ago scientists found a way to decode the 3.1 billion subunits of DNA.

The subunits are called base pairs, and they make up the double helix of the deoxyribonucleic acid or DNA. The genetic instruction of what makes us unique. It's what makes me and you and us.

One section of the original announcement reminded me of the fallibility of humankind.

It said, "most of the base pairs of DNA between genes have no known function and scientists commonly refer to these pairs as Junk DNA."

No known function! So we label them junk! With all due respect to the scientists who worked so hard on this decoding, calling them junk, just because we don't know what they do, smacks of human intellectual arrogance.

To me, it goes into the category of the flat earth proponents and the early scientists who thought the sun revolved around the earth.

Wouldn't it be nice if someday they discovered the junk pairs were the stem instructions for the human attributes of grace, elegance, courtesy, kindness, and compassion?

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