It however remains controversial whether all of this biochemical activity contributes to cell physiology, or whether a substantial portion of this is the result transcriptional and biochemical noise, which must be actively filtered out by the organism. Excluding protein-coding sequences, introns, and regulatory regions, much of the non-coding DNA is composed of: Many DNA sequences that do not play a role in gene expression have important biological functions. Comparative genomics studies indicate that about 5% of the genome contains sequences of noncoding DNA that are highly conserved, sometimes on time-scales representing hundreds of millions of years, implying that these noncoding regions are under strong evolutionary pressure and positive selection.