It seems, in retrospect, that understanding the protein-coding portion of the genome was the easy part; it's the other 98% that's the real challenge. Once derided as mere “junk DNA”—the useless relics of ancient mistakes—the non-coding regions recently earned a great deal more respect, stemming from a series of reports that these regions were hotbeds of transcription. The abundance of RNA signals from this mysterious genomic “dark matter” appeared to indicate that the genome was up to a whole lot more than simply churning out proteins from well-described genes.
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