[gdavisson]

You're refuting a strawman. The junk DNA claim is not, and as far as I can see never had been, that all non-coding DNA is junk. It's that most of our genome -- around 90% -- is junk[1][2]. But since the genome is over 98% non-coding, that implies that something like 8% is functional non-coding DNA, which is several times the amount of coding DNA. Finding small amounts of additional functional non-coding DNA does not significantly challenge this[3].

[1] https://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2022/08/junk-dna-vs-noncoding-...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junk_DNA#History

[3] https://judgestarling.tumblr.com/post/154553548091/long-nonc...