The term junk DNA has been used to describe DNA that does not code for proteins or polypeptides. Recent research has made this term obsolete, and Nessa Carey elaborates on a wide spectrum of examples of ways in which DNA contributes to cell function in addition to coding for proteins. As in her earlier book, The Epigenetics Revolution (reviewed by ABT in 2013), Carey uses analogies and diagrams to relate complicated information. Although she unavoidably uses some jargon, she provides the necessary background for the nonbiologist.
Carey, a visiting professor at Imperial College, London, invokes many cases of human diseases to introduce the additional DNA functions as well as to explain how scientists came to understand them. Readers familiar with the PBS Nova episode “Ghost in Your Genes” will be familiar with the example of Angelman and Prader-Willi syndromes, where the disease is differentially expressed depending on whether a chromosome...
University of California Press