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Our Cells Are Filled With ‘Junk DNA’ — Here’s Why We Need It

Much of our genome has no apparent purpose. Is it so-called “junk DNA” or do we simply not understand it?

By Daniel Bastardo Blanco
Aug 13, 2019 4:58 PMDec 23, 2019 1:28 AM
DNA - Shutterstock
Much of our genome has no apparent purpose. Is it so-called “junk DNA” or do we simply not understand it? (Credit: ktsdesign/Shutterstock)

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Would you purchase a book with over 98 percent of the text written in gibberish? Biology has no business in the book industry, yet it still writes a pretty fascinating guidebook: DNA. Our genetic manual holds the instructions for the proteins that make up and power our bodies. But less than 2 percent of our DNA actually codes for them.

The rest — 98.5 percent of DNA sequences — is so-called “junk DNA” that scientists long thought useless. The non-protein-coding stretches looked like gibberish sentences in a book draft — useless, perhaps forgotten, writing. But new research is revealing that the “junky” parts of our genome might play important roles nonetheless.

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