Importantly, for the first time we have sufficient statistical power to assess the impact of negative selection on primate-specific elements, and all ENCODE classes display evidence of negative selection in these unique to primate elements. Furthermore, even with our most conservative estimate of functional elements (8.5% of putative DNA:protein binding regions) and assuming that we have already sampled half of the elements from our TF and cell type diversity, one would estimate that at a minimum 20% (17% from protein binding, and 2.9% protein coding gene exons) of the genome participates in these specific functions, with the likely figure significantly higher.
