GENES are not scattered randomly across our genome, as we thought. Instead, they fall into a pattern of clusters, a discovery that could one day help biologists perform gene therapy more accurately.
Evolutionary biologists generally consider that natural selection ensures that whole organisms are designed as well as they could be. Yet the human genome is widely thought to be a second-rate design, because only around 2 per cent of its 3 billion “letters” code for proteins, while much of the rest appears to be functionless, repetitive junk.
Biologists have also assumed that genes are inserted at random positions in…
