>>13367999Well yeah, I mean there is a ton of DNA that is just there for biological processes. Take stop/start codons for instance. They're never expressed; they just need to exist so DNA polymerase III knows when to start/stop. That's not what "junk" DNA is referring to. It's mainly the DNA that scientists have not identified any sort of function or purpose other than it just being there.
As for the code analogy, it's not wrong, but I think this is a separate case in that there is a conscious mind navigating what code is left to be used as "regulatory infrastructure"... that of course being us, the coders. Nature doesn't have a conscious mind like a script would have someone coding for it, so we've accumulated a lot of DNA that we just seem to not utilize.
It's as if you were to keep accumulating wires around your desk without ever cleaning up what was not being used anymore. If you kept buying wall outlets or extensions, the junk DNA would be like wires that are not plugged into anything.
