Re: Layman's question on Newsweek article

Most of our DNA is not doing much other than maybe confusing viruses and
occupying space. A lot of it is old viruses. Random changes don't seem to
make much difference in many of these segments so you can use the average
rate of change in them to roughly measure time. If the stuff is active it's
a whole other story.
Is noncoding DNA used in these studies. That is, do they look at
mutations in codons that don't code for an amino acid? The assumption
has long been made that this is "junk" DNA with no uses. If that was
true, they would make the perfect DNA clock. Recent studies show they
may have some selective value as place holders.
Although such DNA probably has some uses, I would think their bias
with respect to DNA dating would be far less than that of coding DNA.

.

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