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When humans started sequencing their genome they thought they’d find a tremendous number of genes. In the end they found fewer than half as many as expected – about 19,900 that actually code for proteins and build life. So what on earth is happening in the cells of Tmesipteris oblanceolata, a small fork fern native to New Caledonia with more than fifty times as much genetic material per cell as Homo sapiens, arranged as a record-breaking 160 billion pairs of genes which end on end would be more than 100 metres long? The answer may be: not much. As in humans, few of the genes actually code for anything. “It’s like trying to find a few books with the instructions for how to survive in a library of millions of books,” says the lead author of a study of the fern in Nature. The mystery of genomic “dark matter” deepens.