What is ENCODE ? “ ENCODE is vast , ” writes scientific discipline writer Ed Yong towards the end ofthis massively comprehensive ( albeit characteristically lucid ) introductionto this ambitious international genome project ; and that it is .
Known formally as the “ Encyclopedia of DNA Elements , ” ENCODE today published 30 papers across three different scientific journals , all with the design of , as Yong puts it , moving us from “ here ’s the genome ” ( the maxim , if you will , of the Human Genome Project ) toward “ here ’s what the genome does . ”
Yong continues :
Over the last 10 age , an outside squad of 442 scientists have assailed 147 unlike types of cell with 24 type of experiments . Their goal : catalogue every letter of the alphabet ( nucleotide ) within the genome that does something .
For years , we ’ve eff that only 1.5 percent of the genome really contains instructions for make protein , the molecular workhorses of our cells . But ENCODE has shown that the rest of the genome – the non - coding majority – is still rife with “ functional elements ” . That is , it ’s doing something .
It contains dock web site where proteins can cling and flip genes on or off . Or it is read and‘transcribed’into molecules of RNA . Or it check whether nearby genes are transliterate ( promoters ; more than 70,000 of these ) . Or it influences the activity of other genes , sometimes across great distances ( enhancers ; more than 400,000 of these ) . Or it affect how DNA is folded and packaged . Something .
allot to ENCODE ’s analysis , 80 percent of the genome has a “ biochemical mapping ” . More on exactlywhat this mean later , but the cardinal point is : It ’s not “ junk” . scientist have long recognisedthat some non - coding desoxyribonucleic acid probably has a subprogram , and manysolid exampleshave recentlycome to light . But , many defend that much of these sequences were , indeed , junk . ENCODE state otherwise . “ Almost every nucleotide is associate with a affair of some sort or another , and we now cognize where they are , what bond to them , what their affiliation are , and more , ” saysTom Gingeras , one of the study ’s many senior scientists .
You ’ll discover the ease of Yong ’s overview ( a surprisingly navigable 3300 - word giant of a blog entry ) of the ENCODE project and its fresh issue batch of dataover at Discover Magazine .
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