Can a new protein-coding gene be born overnight? That's the theme of this series. The answer, remarkably, is yes, and the Arhgap11b gene is the recent case I'm considering. After surveying the ways that this could happen, I narrowed the possible mechanisms to three: Before looking at the details, let's take note of the fact that the genomes of animals and plants typically have gigantic amounts of DNA that does not code for protein.