Free Science from Dogma. or: How the “Pseudogene” Hampered Scientific Progress |Biomedgrid

That science and ideologically chosen terminology don't go very well together is the tacit message of a recent article in Nature, which critisized the pseudogene concept [1]. The article argues that the old idea that pseudogenes are functionless is wrong. There is now ample evidence, and more is rapidly accumulating that pseudogenes fulfill a whole series of extremely important biological functions. They play a role in the production of proteins that are important for the embryonic development of living beings. They control the production of proteins by causing small changes in the structure of DNA. What was originally thought of as pseudogenes turn out to be the genes specifying non-coding RNAs, which regulate the activity and production of proteins from thousands of genes.