Salvage prospect for 'junk' DNA (BBC)

[eppur_se_muova]

By Paul Rincon
BBC News science reporter
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But a team from IBM has identified patterns, or "motifs", that were found both in the junk areas of the genome and those which coded for proteins.

The presence of the motifs in junk DNA suggests these portions of the genome may have an important functional role.
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The researchers found millions of the motifs in non-coding DNA. But roughly 128,000 of these also occurred in the coding region of the genome. These were also over-represented in genes which are involved in specific biological processes.
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Dr Rigoutsos said his team's work suggested, "a connection between a vast area of the genome we didn't think was functional with the part of the genome we knew was functional".
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more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4940654.stm

Many caveats and alternative opinions are presented; quite possibly a record for "density of qualified statements", even for science.

No one could have predicted that ... genetics would get even more complicated.

[thereismore]

1. This has been known for ~3 years now. There is no junk DNA.

There are short regulatory elements (aka motifs) that tell the cell when and how much of which RNA to make, repeat elements, and vast stretches of DNA that we haven't got a clue why it is there, but there is evidence that it is needed. Creationists are saying: We told you so. That's because some evolutionist enthusiast called it junk DNA and proclaimed it "the best proof of evolution".