Is Most of Our DNA Garbage?
        
            By Carl Zimmer, 
                The New York Times
             | 03. 05. 2015
        
                    
                                    
                    
                                                                                                                                    
                                                                            
                              
    
  
  
    
  
          
  
      
    
            T.   Ryan Gregory’s lab at the University of Guelph in Ontario is a sort of   genomic menagerie, stocked with creatures, living and dead, waiting to   have their DNA laid bare. Scorpions lurk in their terrariums. Tarantulas   doze under bowls. Flash-frozen spiders and crustaceans — collected by   Gregory, an evolutionary biologist, and his students on expeditions to   the Arctic — lie piled in beige metal tanks of liquid nitrogen. A bank   of standing freezers holds samples of mollusks, moths and beetles. The   cabinets are crammed with slides splashed with the fuchsia-stained   genomes of fruit bats, Siamese fighting fish and ostriches.
 
  Gregory’s   investigations into all these genomes has taught him a big lesson about   life: At its most fundamental level, it’s a mess. His favorite way to   demonstrate this is through what he calls the “onion test,” which   involves comparing the size of an onion’s genome to that of a human. To   run the test, Gregory’s graduate student Nick Jeffery brought a young   onion plant to the lab from the university greenhouse. He handed me a   single-edged safety razor, and then the...
 
       
 
  
 
    
    
  
   
                        
                                                                                
                 
                                                    
                            
                                  
    
  
  
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