EBI's Ewan Birney: Quest for the Genomic Dragons

摘要

When the human genome project was completed in 2003, it provided the DNA sequences of the 3 billion base pairs that make up the genome, but that was effectively all it did. Researchers were left to translate that sequence data into meaningful information about the protein-coding genes that have been the focus of molecular biology for the past 40-odd years. They were left to guess at what this meant for the region of the genome that has traditionally been written off as "junk"-the DNA that sits between genes and inside of genes but plays no apparent role in the coding of proteins.