text: Introns are the parts of a gene that are transcribed into the precursor RNA sequence, but ultimately removed by RNA splicing during the processing to mature RNA. Introns are found in both types of genes: protein-coding genes and noncoding genes. They are present in prokaryotes but they are much more common in eukaryotic genomes.
  Group I and group II introns take up only a small percentage of the genome when they are present. Spliceosomal introns (see Figure) are only found in eukaryotes and they can represent a substantial proportion of the genome. In humans, for example, introns in protein-coding genes cover 37% of the genome. Combining that with about 1% coding sequences means that protein-coding genes occupy about 38% of the human genome. The calculations for noncoding genes are more complicated because there is considerable dispute over the total number of noncoding genes but taking only the well-defined examples means that noncoding genes occupy at least 6% of the genome.