The puzzle seems impossible: take a three-billion-letter code and predict what happens if you swap a single letter. The code we’re talking about—the human genome—stores most of its instructions in ...

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 ...

Non-coding DNA is essential for both humans and trypanosomes, despite the large evolutionary divergence between these two species.

A research team led by Zhiping Weng, Ph.D., and Jill Moore, Ph.D."18, at UMass Chan Medical School, has nearly tripled the ...

The non-coding genome, once dismissed as "junk DNA", is now recognized as a fundamental regulator of gene expression and a key player in understanding complex diseases. Following the landmark ...

Researchers have revealed that so-called ‘junk DNA’ contains powerful switches that help control brain cells linked to Alzheimer’s disease. When people picture DNA, they often imagine a set of genes ...

Why cells grow to just the right size has long baffled scientists. Too small or too large, and cells can trigger serious diseases, but the genetic switch behind this balance has remained elusive. Now, ...

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 ...

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 ...