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junk Janet Kuypers (started 10/19/14, completed 10/21/14) We all think we’re so important all the way down to our DNA — but for all of our chromosomes             all of our genetics             and our glorious genome — well, if you look at it closely, if you look all the way down to our DNA, you’d be stunned to see how much of what we’re made of is just junk. Yeah, yeah, I know, we’ve got so much DNA, we’re such complex creatures, but — Think of it this way: a simple worm has maybe 7% junk DNA. A fruit fly, maybe 3%... And then there’s us humans, with our big brains — and ourjunk DNA seems to go off the charts. What a fun phrase, “junk DNA”, because after discovering the helixes that make us us, we’ve found sequences withnodiscernible function. And we love that label, junk DNA — maybe it’s a sign that we’re all hoarders at heart, we all want more and everything we get has to be bigger and better, even if we don’t know what it’s for. Because, I mean, even a newt has a genome 25 times longer than ours... What does that say about what we’re made of? Us little creatures compared to rhinos and elephants, using our big brains to stay on top of the food chain over those deadly panthers, lions, tigers, and bears. Look how we’ve won with our opposable thumbs, we help 200 species go extinct every day. Wow, what warriors we are. Species on Earth haven’t gone extinct like this since the dinosaurs. Wow. What warriors we are. We think we’re all so great with our opposable thumbs and our really big brains, and when we look at it all, microscopically, you know... We become smart enough to know our own DNA, and we start to wonder how smart we really are, when we see how so much of what we’re made of is really just junk.

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