Tag Archives: Science Magazine
Long Noncoding RNAs May Alter Chromosome’s 3D Structure
by Elizabeth Pennisi – Science Magazine
Our 21,000 protein-coding genes aren’t the only readable units in our genome. At last count, another 13,000 “genes” specify mysterious molecules called long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs), and when the final tallies are in, they may outnumber protein-coding genes. But what are these RNAs good for? Some researchers have suggested that they represent “noise”: DNA randomly converted to RNA that serves no purpose. Others propose that they may be as pivotal as proteins in guiding cellular processes. To find out, Jesse Engreitz, a graduate student working with Mitchell Guttman and Eric Lander at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has taken a close look at one of the first noncoding RNAs discovered, XIST, which was identified 20 years ago as a silencer that shuts down one of the X chromosomes in females to ensure the proper amount of gene activity.
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The Biggest Science Breakthroughs Of The Year
This year’s Science Breakthroughs of the Year include a remarkable new method to prepare single strands of ancient DNA and view their genomes, transcription activator–like effector nucleases that can destroy or alter specific genes, neutrino physics, the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements, the flawless performance of the Mars Curiosity rover, the first time an x-ray laser was used to determine the structure of a protein, the use of a brain-machine interface by paralyzed human patients to execute complex movements, Majorana fermions, and the production of eggs cells from stem cells.
The ENCODE project revealed a ton of data to help us understand our genomes better.
The results of a gigantic biology project — called ENCODE — were released in early September. The project covered ten years of effort by over 400 scientists and has culminated in 30 scientific papers published today.
The data from the project is still being analyzed, but it will help us understand our own genomes, not just based on the sequence of letters in the DNA code, but how this DNA interacts with proteins and other strands of DNA and RNA. These interactions happen in the non-coding regions of the genome, which are kind of like the “dark matter” of our genome — they don’t get turned into proteins (only about 1.5 percent of your DNA does), so researchers were unsure what roles they played.
They think they’ve found the functions of about 80 percent of these non-coding regions with the ENCODE survey.
- Science 21 December 2012: Vol. 338 no. 6114 pp. 1525-1532 [abstract]