In the Human Genome, Function Is There When You Look for It

There’s a highly emotional, not merely scientific, controversy raging about function. The ENCODE project announced that 80% of the human genome is functional, but as Jonathan Wells noted earlier, a group at Oxford University now claims only 8.2% is. Nature reports on the controversy without taking sides, but states that the dispute turns upon the way one defines function.

ENCODE assumed that if something is transcribed, it is functional. The Oxford group assumes something is functional if nat...