The Human Genome Is Far More Complex Than Scientists Thought

Gizmodo ^ | 09/06/2012 | Jamie Condliffe

[SeekAndFind]

For the past decade, scientists have been working on the assumption that 20,000 genes, less than 2 percent of the total genome, underpin human biology. But a massive international project called ENCODE has just revealed that plenty of the remaining 98 percent, once tossed aside as "junk DNA", is in fact incredibly important.

In fact, the project—known more formally as the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements—reveals that 80 percent of that "junk DNA" is biochemically active. Add to that the fact that large stretches of DNA that appeared to serve no purpose actually contain over 400,000 regulators that help activate or silence genes, and the scientific community is surprised to say the least.

The finding required an international team of 442 scientists and a decade of research to come to fruition. But, according to Ewan Birney of the European Bioinformatics Institute in the UK who spoke to the Wall Street Journal, the discovery "is like a huge set of floodlights being switched on".

The findings will shake up biology for good, and are already starting to help scientists better understand disease. It will, however, take a long time for scientists to get to grips with the vast quantities of information this research yields. To give you some sense of scale, the main research findings alone are being published in 30 central papers in Nature, Genome Biology and Genome Research. With plenty more to come, biologists will be kept busy for some time.

If you're keen to read more about the new findings and how they'll change science, Ed Yong has an extremely thorough—yet incredibly readable—account you should take a look at. [ENCODE via Not Exactly Rocket Science]

[zeugma]

It's also a call for sheer amazement at Gods creation. The click through is a great write up;

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2012/09/05/encode-the-rough-guide-to-the-human-genome/

Agreed. Worth reading.

Here's an interesting snippet:

Transparency is a big issue too. “With these really intensive science projects, there has to be a huge amount of trust that data analysts have done things correctly,” says Birney. But you don’t have to trust. At least half the ENCODE figures are interactive, and the data behind them can be downloaded. The team have also built a “Virtual Machine” – a downloadable package of the almost-raw data and all the code in the ENCODE analyses. Think of it as the most complete Methods section ever. With the virtual machine, “you can absolutely replay step by step what we did to get to the figure,” says Birney. “I think it should be the standard for the future.”

Yes. This is how science should be done. You'll never see anything like this from the global warming crowd.

[petro45acp]

Calling a spade a spade.....

This guarantees several things.

More money for research “we aren’t close to a universal cure for ANYTHING yet...we need more $$$” isn’t that a noble cause? (prefer the nice MLT mutton lettuce and tomato when the tomatoes are fresh and the mutton is nice and lean....they’re so perky)

Continued revenues from continued, expensive, crushing therapies and treatments (not to mention the wide array of $$$$$$ te$t$)

Breakthroughs in treatments (ongoing) that will require the burdensome weight of the FDA, its minions, consensus, and time to market.

Magnificence in complexity, God’s grace is greatest.

[muawiyah]

The 98% commonality ~ which is now more like 94%, was based on GENES ~ not the entire DNA strands in our genome. The epigenetic studies have already shown us to be less entangled with chimps than is comfortable for some. Actually, the orangutangs are making a far better showing these days than some other lines of apes.

This work will lead eventually to several things:

(1) The disestablishment of Darwinian evolution entirely,

(2) The replacement of current evolution discussion that focuses on genes and their variations with something else that probably doesn't even sound like evolution (as if current "change" stuff does) ~ probably more like how our immune systems attack bugs, and

(3) A way into controlled gene resetting or modification ~ so if you get a bad mutation "they" can fix it!

I'm expecting that at some point someone will figure out how to wire up a chromosome so that we can communicate with it directly ~ see what it's thinking of ~ where it's going ~ why it "did that" instead of "this" ~ and so forth.

[muawiyah]

The "junk DNA" assessment was some science writer's imagination running rampant ~ that didn't come out of any formal study.

At some point we need to quit using the term.

[MHGinTN]

‘Right turn, Clyde.’

[muawiyah]

Glucophage and glipizide both reset dna functions.