Week In Science

The linked Biocompare article, One Man's Junk May Be A Genomic Treasure, cites the findings of researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine indicating that non-protein coding DNA may be rich in information and have the functional likeness of grammar punctuation. These "grammatical regions" could involve structuring the rules by which coding regions are expressed and regulated.

As the article noted, "Decoding the information written in “junk” DNA could open new areas of medical research, particularly in the area of gene therapy. Scientists may find that transferring encoding genes into a patient, without also transferring the surrounding genomic sequences which give structure or meaning to these genes, would render gene therapy ineffective."