The Encyclopedia of DNA Elements is a new discovery made in 2012 of how the extra DNA we thought was junk for many decades, actually has a purpose! By encoding what the 3 billion letters mean in the Human Genome Project, we can trace who our ancestors were, and specifically what gene we received from them when they existed at a specific time period.

Nature Encode has a plan to assign biochemical functions to these letters of the genome in order to understand the physical features of a person, and how they are expressed internally. Doing so will allow each individual to know exactly where they came from, and how the expression of genes from their parents’ and previous generations were distributed within them.

For example, if you have brown hair but both of your parents have black hair, the Human Genome Project can trace back the history of your parents’ generation to match you with the relative who carried the same gene as your hair. As of the moment, Nature Encode has assigned biochemical functions to 80% of the Human Genome, identifying with most of those genes as explained in the video.

Picture provided by nature

Sourced: NatureVideoChannel

Curated: @KatherineNader, an online editor at Arbitrage Magazine, is the author of The Deadly Mark. She is a student of Biology, English, and Professional Writing at the University of Toronto.