 One commonly held view that can be quickly dismissed, is the idea that the genome is just the sum total of an organism’s genes. The problem here is just that even passing over the well-known problems with saying what a gene is (see Barnes &amp; Dupré 2008; SEP entry on the  gene),  on any tenable account of genes, there is far more to the genome than genes, and only a fraction of the actual DNA contained in the chromosomes would be part of the genome, at least in the case of humans and other organisms that have a relatively large amount of non-coding DNA (Barnes &amp; Dupré 2008:  76).[4]  Even if ‘gene’ is interpreted in the widest possible sense, including any section of the genome that has some identifiable function, no one denies that a significant amount of DNA is not functional. The rest of the DNA would not form part of the genome, an outcome that contradicts all definitions of the genome of which we are aware, and makes nonsense of such familiar concepts as ‘whole-genome sequencing’, which refers to the analysis of all the DNA found in the chromosomes.