Plumbing the ‘dark’ genome for new genes

On June 26, 2000, former U.S. President, Bill Clinton, announced the completion of a draft sequence of the human genome, a historic landmark for genetic research. The Human Genome Project helped map our genes, strengthened the study of human diseases and aided new drug discovery. But even after two decades, the number of ‘known’ genes – encoding around 20,000 ‘known’ proteins - has remained constant. It is also a conundrum why only 1.5% of the entire human genome codes for proteins. A team from the University of Cambridge set out to find whether new genes emerge in the genome of living organisms, and if they do, how they do so.