1. Neutral evolution has helped shape our genome

Comment #55720 by c-strong on July 12, 2007 at 4:12 am

Johns Hopkins researchers have added to the growing mound of evidence that many of the genetic bits and pieces that drive evolutionary changes do not confer any advantages or disadvantages to humans or other animals.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is an oxymoron. Genetic material that "drives" evolutionary change must confer an advantage or disadvantage by definition. In fact, it seems to me that the whole article is trying to talk up a fairly uninteresting finding. The key point is here:

Strikingly, however, none of these numts contained the blueprint (an actual gene) to make a protein that does anything, nor did they seem to control the function of any nearby genes.

So they don't actually do anything. They're just junk DNA. Everyone knows that the human, and every other, genome has lots of junk DNA. The interesting thing, I suppose, is that the numts are higher in primates than rodents (LOL at the notion that species "advance"!) but the researchers give a reasonable explanation for this.