Solved cryptogram
Only a small fraction of your DNA spells out a protein. The rest is doing other things.
Biology Facts, sourced to MedlinePlus.
Solve it yourself
This fact is a cryptogram here: 69 letters over 18 different ones, graded medium.
Or go to the puzzle’s own page first.
What it means
Around one or two percent of the sequence codes for proteins. The remainder was called junk for years, which turned out to be a confession rather than a finding. A good deal of it is regulatory: switches that decide which genes run in which cells and when, spacers, structural regions that hold chromosomes together, and instructions for RNA molecules that do jobs of their own without ever becoming a protein.
The claim comes from MedlinePlus.
- SourceMedlinePlus
- CollectionBiology Facts
- Difficultymedium
- Length69 letters, 18 of them different
Nearby in the collection
The facts either side of this one.
- MedlinePlus, National Library of Medicinemedium, 70 letters
- NIAIDmedium, 77 letters
- National Human Genome Research Institutemedium, 70 letters
- National Human Genome Research Institutemedium, 74 letters
About as hard as this one
Scored closest to it by the model behind our guide to solving cryptograms.
- U.S. National Park Servicemedium, 71 letters
- Georgia Institute of Technologymedium, 69 letters
- PNASmedium, 72 letters
- NIDDKmedium, 72 letters