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High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the article. See our Ts&Cs and Copyright Policy for more detail. Researchers in the US have developed an implant to help a disabled brain encode memories, giving new hope to Alzheimer’s sufferers and wounded soldiers who cannot remember the recent past. The prosthetic, developed at the University of Southern California and Wake Forest Baptist Medical Centre in a decade-long collaboration, includes a small array of electrodes implanted into the brain. High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this...

In 2012, a variety of research papers associated with the ENCODE project (Encyclopedia Of DNA Elements) described how the human genome was pervasively copied—transcribed—into an amazing array of functional RNA molecules that regulate how genes and the genome function.1 Much of the pervasive transcription is based on long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) that have the same control features as protein-coding genes but with other functions.2 A large group of lncRNAs stay in the cell’s nucleus, where some directly regulate how genes are expressed while others help modify chromosome structure. Some lncRNAs are exported into the cell’s cytoplasm to regulate the production...

Enlarge Image Zooming in. This diagram illustrates a chromosome in ever-greater detail, as the ENCODE project drilled down to DNA to study the functional elements of the genome. Credit: ENCODE project The human genome—the sum total of hereditary information in a person—contains a lot more than the protein-coding genes teenagers learn about in school, a massive international project has found. When researchers decided to sequence the human genome in the late 1990s, they were focused on finding those traditional genes so as to identify all the proteins necessary for life. Each gene was thought to be a discrete piece...

Epigenetics: More Information than Evolution Can Handle by Brian Thomas, M.S. Living things develop partly according to genetic instructions encoded on their DNA. The study of inheritance has widened the paradigms from genes to genomes, and now recent research has added yet another player to the field. Critical biological information is carried from one generation to the next in systems additional to DNA, called epigenetic factors, say scientists at the Canadian Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH). Medical doctor Art Petronis and his team at the CAMH compared methylated DNA patterns (possible epigenetic factors) across the entire genome of...

The traditional understanding of DNA has recently been transformed beyond recognition. DNA does not, as we thought, carry a linear, one-dimensional, one-way, sequential code—like the lines of letters and words on this page. And the 97% in humans that does not carry protein-coding genes is not, as many people thought, fossilized ‘junk’ left over from our evolutionary ancestors. DNA information is overlapping-multi-layered and multi-dimensional; it reads both backwards and forwards; and the ‘junk’ is far more functional than the protein code, so there is no fossilized history of evolution. No human engineer has ever even imagined, let alone designed an...

Genetic Expression: Same Genes Can Produce Different Results by Brian Thomas, M.S.* Genes could be thought of as brick molds, used to construct materials for building the physical structures of living organisms. They carry the codes to help make proteins, which then make up different cells that are combined together to form mega-structures called tissues. New research has shed more light on how genes are used by cells to build the different tissues needed by complex living creatures. Genes—which make up a very small fraction of DNA—were thought to be the central genetic features that drive cell function and embryonic...

DR. FEERO is a family physician with a doctorate in human genetics from the University of Pittsburgh. He is a senior adviser for genomic medicine in the Office of the Director at the National Human Genome Research Institute. Our understanding of the genome is changing rapidly and drastically. For starters, the Human Genome Project has revealed that humans are, on a numerical basis, genetically less complex than a mustard plant (Arabidopsis). In fact, our genome contains between 20,000 and 25,000 sequences suggestive of “genes” encoding proteins, whereas Arabidopsis contains about 27,000. If that doesn't make much sense to you, don't...

We report the generation and analysis of functional data from multiple, diverse experiments performed on a targeted 1% of the human genome as part of the pilot phase of the ENCODE Project. These data have been further integrated and augmented by a number of evolutionary and computational analyses. Together, our results advance the collective knowledge about human genome function in several major areas. First, our studies provide convincing evidence that the genome is pervasively transcribed, such that the majority of its bases can be found in primary transcripts, including non-protein-coding transcripts, and those that extensively overlap one another. Second, systematic...