Genome Biology

While the complete sequencing of the human genome was a landmark event, it was also – at least in retrospect – the easy part. Now comes the task of sorting out exactly what all those three billion base pairs of DNA actually do. In fact, just two percent of the genome is made up of protein-coding genes, and scientists are increasingly realizing that the other 98 percent can't simply be discarded as junk, as many once thought it could.

In search of meaning in the unexplained bulk of the DNA sequence, IGSP Investigators are exploring structural, functional and regulatory elements in the human and other genomes, including elements that follow known "rules" and those that may be encoded in ways scientists don't yet really understand.