For the past decade, scientists have been working on the
assumption that 20,000 genes, less than 2 percent of the total
genome, underpin human biology. But a massive international
project called ENCODE has just revealed that plenty of the
remaining 98 percent, once tossed aside as "junk DNA", is in
fact incredibly important. In fact, the project—known more
formally as the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements—reveals that 80
percent of that "junk DNA" is biochemically active. Add to that
the fact that large stretches of DNA that appeared to serve no
purpose actually contain over 400,000 regulators that help
activate or silence genes, and the scientific community is
surprised to say the least. The finding required an
international team of 442 scientists and a decade of research to
come to fruition. But, according to Ewan Birney of the European
Bioinformatics Institute in the UK who spoke to the Wall Street
Journal, the discovery "is like a huge set of floodlights being
switched on". The findings will shake up biology f