Somewhere in a pile of fiction ideas, I have a scribbled quote from a scientific article that describes how most of human DNA was believed to be junk sequences that did nothing. I saved it thinking that it would be an interesting story concept to have someone discover that these masses of junk sequences were actually the key to human evolution. They could, in sci-fi land, hold the information needed to figure out how humans used to look and how they were going to look. Just because the sequences seemed to be junk now, didn’t mean that they couldn’t be interpreted as having some meaning. Well, I never got around to actually writing a story, but scientists now believe that these sequences, which are very repetitive, “could actually provide valuable clues to the course of human evolution”. A Wired News article gives some differing opinions on this development. Some scientists have evidence that the repetitive strands “have helped genes travel from generation to generation.” Some think it is less useful, but not critical. Most just aren’t sure. At any rate, my story doesn’t seem as compelling now that it could actually prove to be true.