The non-coding genome: a universe in expansion for fine-tuning the coding world

A report on the EMBO/EMBL Symposium on The Non-Coding Genome, held in Heidelberg, Germany, 9-12 October, 2013.We share 98% coding genome similarity with mouse and have about the same number of protein coding genes as worms, yet the differences in complexity are obvious. Where is this complexity encoded? A huge change in our understanding of genome evolution and regulation of gene expression arrived with the development of high-throughput sequencing technologies. It turns out that most of our genome is transcribed, but only a small percentage has coding information imbedded. The rest of the genome, the non-coding genome, mistakenly labeled as ‘junk DNA’, is where evolutionary complexity resides. In The Non-Coding Genome meeting, several research studies delved deeper into the importance of the non-coding genome, identifying novel classes of non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) and novel regulatory functions, and expanding our knowledge about this new world, opening more exciting questions to study and answer.