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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Only around two percent of the human genome codes for proteins, and while those proteins carry out many important functions of the cell, the rest of the genome cannot be ignored. However, for decades ...

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 ...

A tiny percentage of our DNA—around 2%—contains 20,000-odd genes. The remaining 98%—long known as the non-coding genome, or ...

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 ...

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, ...

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 ...

Researchers have revealed that so-called “junk DNA” contains powerful switches that help control brain cells linked to ...