Säilyvyys/merkitys

mutta viimeistä sanaa ei toki ole vielä sanottu. Tuo artikkelikin ehdottelee mahdollisia selityksiä:

"Discussion
Based on the compelling evidence that ultraconserved elements are conserved due to functional constraint, it has been proposed that their removal in vivo would lead to a significant phenotypic impact [7,8]. Accordingly, our results were unexpected. It is possible that our assays were not able to detect dramatic phenotypes that under a different setting, for instance, outside the controlled laboratory setting, would become evident. Moreover, possible phenotypes might become evident only on a longer timescale, such as longer generation time. It is also possible that subtler genetic manipulations of the ultraconserved elements might lead to an evident phenotype due to a gain-of-function-type mechanism. All four elements examined in this study demonstrated in vivo enhancer activity when tested in a transgenic mouse assay (Figure 1) [6], which would suggest regulatory element redundancy as another possible explanation for the lack of a significant impact following the removal of these specific elements. Just as gene redundancy has been shown to be responsible for the lack of phenotypes associated with many seemingly vital gene knockouts, regulatory sequence redundancy [22] can similarly provide a possible explanation for the lack of a marked phenotype in this study. While our studies have not defined a specific need for the extreme sequence constraints of noncoding ultraconserved elements, they have ruled out the hypothesis that these constraints reflect crucial functions required for viability."

Katsopa yläpuolella oleva kirjoitus "Hyödyttömästä hyödylliseksi" universaalista genomista. Nämä kaksi asiaa saattavat liittyä toisiinsa.

"Here I propose an experimentally testable hypothesis of Universal Genome that addresses these questions."