SCIENTISTS DISCOVER MORE FUNCTION FOR JUNK DNA EVERYDAY. Cells just dont die only to be discarded. Theyre treasure troves of information, so the body has an elaborate procedure for disassembling them called apoptosis, aka programmed cell death (PCD). Researchers at the Univ. of São Paulo in Brazil just recently discovered long non-coding RNA sequences that regulate the action of an important gene that impacts apoptosis. Non-coding DNA used to be erroneously called junk until the ENCODE project confirmed the so-called pseudo-genes do have function. When demolition of a cell begins, there are biochemical events that begin an organized method to defragment the molecular machinery including activities such as blebbing, cell shrinkage, nuclear fragmentation, chromatin condensation, and chromosomal DNA fragmentation. The research team discovered that an intron called INXS performs this role. In other news, another large library of non-coding genes have opened up an entire new research field called epigenetics. This GEN marketing study reports on the trend in epigenetic research for development and commercialization of diagnostics and therapeutics, genengnews/insight-and-intelligence/epigenetic-biomarkers-and-clinical-trials/77900215/. The epigenetic sequences are a rich source of biomarkers to assist cancer-fighting research. There is also a growing area of study within epigenetics related to the central nervous system, as researchers hope to gain insight in the area of neuroscience, learning ability and memory. So, junk DNA is being found to have much more useful function every day.
Posted on: Thu, 31 Jul 2014 16:54:00 +0000
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