ScienceDaily (June 6, 2009) — What was once thought of as DNA with zero value in plants--dubbed "junk" DNA--may turn out to be key in helping scientists improve the control of gene expression in transgenic crops.

That's according to Agricultural Research Service (ARS) plant pathologist Bret Cooper at the agency's Soybean Genomics and Improvement Laboratory in Beltsville, Md., and collaborators at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md.

For more than 30 years, scientists have been perplexed by the workings of intergenic DNA, which is located between genes. Scientists have since found that, among other functions, some intergenic DNA plays a physical role in protecting and linking chromosomes. But after subtracting intergenic DNA, there was still leftover or "junk" DNA which seemed to have no purpose.