There seems to be a bit of a leap of assumptions here. The claim is that, since this organism is doing just fine without all that non-coding DNA, it must not, therefore, serve any purpose in that organism. The conclusion doesn't really seem justified.
I would agree that we can not jump to the conclusion that the lost DNA served
no function. What we can conclude is that whatever function it may have had it had very little impact on fitness when it was removed. Also, the complexity of the bladderwort is on par with plants that have thousands of times more DNA than it does, so we can also conclude that junk DNA is not
required for morphological complexity.
I highly doubt that the evolutionary pathway leading to such a small genome in the bladderwort was a long one. From every indication, junk DNA was pared away from the genome in great swaths. What is more interesting is that the gene count is actually higher in the bladderwort than other species with larger genomes which could indicate that the extra genes are compensating for the function found in the lost junk DNA. That's about the only hope I see for those who want to argue for non-disposable function in junk DNA.
Edited by Taq, : No reason given.
Edited by Taq, : No reason given.