Danielle Gerhardt in The Scientist:
In the last two years, scientists achieved two genomic milestones: the complete sequences of the human non-Y genome and, just this past August, that of the Y chromosome.1,2 With the final pages of the human genetic playbook complete, plenty of mysteries remain, including the function of many of the 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. To encourage research on these many mystery genes, a team of scientists have created a new publicly available database that ranks genes based on how little is known about them.3 Using this new directory, they selected more than 200 neglected genes that are evolutionarily conserved between fruit flies and humans. The systematic silencing of these genes in fruit flies revealed that many are essential for survival and other important biological functions, demonstrating that there is still much to be explored in the vast unknowns in the genome.
Sean Munro, a biologist at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology and coauthor of the paper, noted that the functional unknome—a portmanteau of unknown genome and a catchall coined by the authors to describe the collection of known genes with unknown function—has shrunk since the early 2000s, but scientists have plenty of ground to cover. “There’s still a couple thousand genes in the human genome, at least, for which essentially nothing is known, and then there are some where a little is known, but not very much,” said Munro.
More here.