Don't junk the 'junk DNA' just yet

The ENCODE project has revealed that 80 per cent of our genome does something, but doing something is not the same as doing something useful

HUMANS are adaptationists by instinct: we tend to assume that everything is there for a purpose. But as Stephen Jay Gould famously argued, many biological features are merely by-products of selection for other characteristics.

Take the 3 billion base pairs of DNA that make up the human genome. Ever since the 1970s, some biologists have argued that almost all of it must be vital. Others have dismissed most of it as junk.

This week, many will declare that the debate is finally over with the unveiling of results from the ENCODE project, showing that up to 80 per cent of our genome does do something (see "The ever deepening mystery of the human genome").

But not so fast. It has yet to be shown that most of this activity is adaptive. In fact, there are still very good reasons for thinking that most of our DNA is far from essential.

ENCODE is an epic project that will undoubtedly lead to many advances, but it is premature to leap to grand conclusions. Just as the much anticipated human genome project revealed more than a decade ago, ENCODE tells us we still have an enormous amount to learn from the book of life.

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