Despite progress in defining functional elements of noncoding DNA, it is still not fully understood. UCLA researchers, using an experiment that elucidated the function of tens of thousands of ...

Noncoding elements in the genome, such as enhancers, silencers, and insulators, play important roles in gene expression and thus cellular behavior. Therefore, these elements may be of particular ...

Researchers are investigating the role of non-coding DNA, or junk DNA, in regulating astrocytes, brain cells involved in ...

There are some genes that can promote cancer; they are sometimes called oncogenes, and in tumor cells, mutations are often found in these genes. When they are functioning normally, oncogenes are often ...

Using STING-seq, short for systematic targeting and inhibition of noncoding GWAS loci with single cell sequencing, Sanjana and his team identified promising sequence variants linked to various ...

It has been claimed that because most of our DNA is active, it must be important, but now human-plant hybrid cells have been ...

For decades, scientists have been puzzled by large portions of the human genome labeled as “junk” DNA, sequences that seemingly serve no purpose. Yet, recent studies suggest these cryptic sequences ...

The human genome contains about 20,000 protein-coding genes, but that only accounts for roughly two percent of the genome. For many years, it was easier for scientists to simply ignore all of that ...

Genes contain instructions for making proteins, and a central dogma of biology is that this information flows from DNA to RNA to proteins. But only two percent of the human genome actually encodes ...

Imagine the human genome as a string stretching out for the length of a football field, with all the genes that encode proteins clustered at the end near your feet. Take two big steps forward; all the ...

Much of the "junk" DNA in Drosophila shows signs of either negative or positive selection, according to a study in this week's Nature. An analysis by Peter Andolfatto of the University of California, ...