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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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