In September 2012, the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) Project Consortium, a multi-institution collaboration that included the ӳý, capped off nine years of research with a flurry of papers that characterized proteins, enzymes, and other functional elements of the human genome. These elements, which were once dismissed as “junk DNA” because they were not among the protein-coding genes, are now thought to fulfill key functions, often regulating how and when genes are activated.