Mervyn Jacobson read about Simons' bumpy journey and was smitten with the idea of finding value in junk DNA. In 1989 they formed GeneType and applied for their first patent covering noncodingregions and HLA. In 2000 GeneType pulled off a reverse merger with a publicly traded Australian shell company that formerly mined for gold.
Up to one quarter of genetic mutations occur either in introns, noncoding segments of DNAsandwiched within the coding regions of a gene, or in sequences between genes.