Repetitve elements, junk DNA, transposons, and compartative genomics, James Watson
Description:
Interviewee: James Watson.
James Watson talks abput repetitve elements, junk DNA, transposons, and compartative genomics.
Transcript:
The sort of key feature you see is all this repetitive DNA, the origin of the so-called junk DNA, these movable genetic elements forming a very large part of our genome. I'd say the thing we didn't expect is really genes haven't changed hardly at all during vertebrate development, we have virtually the same genes as the fish and really, you know, the mouse and humans, I never expected they'd be so similar. It's the same actors but they come onstage at different time and they change their clothes slightly and so roughly the same genes can give you a mouse or a human, it depends when they work. And that, so we're learning an enormous amount about evolution.
The Maize Genome Project is the culmination of a century of maize research at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory that began with George Shull and continued with Nobel Laureate Barbara McClintock.