为垃圾DNA正名

An international team of scientists has published the most detailed analysis to date of the human genome. Writing in the journal Nature, they say they found that 80% of the genetic blueprint, previously dismissed as junk DNA, has a specific biological function. They've also discovered 4 million DNA switches, which control genes. The researchers hope the findings will lead to a deeper understanding of numerous diseases.

That was a headline on September 5th, the end of the concept of junk DNA. Actually, geneticists had long abandoned the idea that our genomes are riven with old rubbish. But what was once called junk was largely still unexplored. The story of this landmark project, published as dozens of coordinated studies - not just at Nature where I work, but in other leading journals too - began back in 2001 with the most surprising finding of the Human Genome Project.

"One of the major surprises that came out of the Human Genome Project was that there were so few genes and those protein-coding genes occupy so little of the genome, just over 1%. So what is the rest of the territory, the 99% of the genome? What does it do if it doesn't make protein? And I think much of the last ten years has been all about trying to work out what are the different ways that the genome expresses itself when it doesn't make protein directly."