Article: Human Genome Is Mostly 'Junk DNA,' With Only 8.2% Functional

“We found that 8.2 percent of our human genome is functional,” said Dr. Gerton Lunter of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics at Oxford University and joint senior author of the study. This means, Lunter explains, the rest of our genome is just leftover evolutionary material — if the genome were a house, this would be all the unused stuff stored in the attic — part of the genome that has undergone losses or gains in the DNA code. Even more, among the significant 8.2 percent, not all of that DNA is equally important. A little over one percent codes for proteins carrying out the critical biological processes in the body, while the other roughly seven percent is thought to be involved in the switching on and off of genes — at different times, in response to various factors, and in different parts of the body.

So 92% of our DNA is still "useless."