ENCODE

Two days ago, a big meeting in Maryland of researchers into non-coding DNA (alleged “junk DNA” ) wrapped up, and people have been writing to us about the various, so-far unofficially publicized findings that friends have told them about. One researcher whose specialty is orphan genes observed that although we have similar genes to mice, the DHS regions in the DNA associated with these genes feature only 5% similarity between mice and humans. This is all the more peculiar because the eventual development of mice is very similar to that of humans even though so many differences in regulatory pathways exist. He was part of a research team that discovered this: Abstract: To study the evolutionary dynamics of regulatory DNA, we mapped Read More ›