Abstract
For decades, evolutionary scientists have ignored "junk" DNA that supposedly littered our genetic sequence. Now that they've finally realized their mistake, they're opening new fields of discovery. For decades most of the human genome (98 percent) has been considered "junk" DNA, with only about 2 percent coding for proteins. The geneticist Susumu Ohno first coined the term junk DNA in 1972. He stated, "The earth is strewn with fossil remains of extinct species; is it a wonder that our genome too is filled with the remains of extinct genes?"