University of California San Diego Health 11/12/2021
In an unprecedented atlas, researchers begin to map how genes are turned on or off in different cells, a step toward better understanding the connections between genetics and diseaseResearchers at University of California San Diego have produced a single-cell chromatin atlas for the human genome. Chromatin is a complex of DNA and protein found in eukaryotic cells; regions of chromatin at key gene regulatory elements appear in open configurations within certain cell nuclei. Precisely delineating these accessible chromatin regions in cells of different human tissue types would be a major step toward understanding the role of gene regulatory elements (non-coding DNA) in human health or disease.
The findings are published online in the November 12, 2021 issue of Cell.
For scientists, the human genome, popularly called the “book of life,” is mostly unwritten. Or at least unread. While science has famously put an (approximate) number to all of the protein-coding genes required to build a human being, approximately 20,000+, that estimation does not really begin to explain how exactly the construction process works or, in the case of disease, it might go awry.
“The human genome was sequenced 20 years ago, but interpreting the meaning of this book of life continues to be challenging,” said Bing Ren, PhD, director of the Center for Epigenomics, professor of cellular and molecular medicine at UC San Diego School of Medicine and a member of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research at UC San Diego.
“A major reason is that the majority of the human DNA sequence, more than 98 percent, is non-protein-coding, and we do not yet have a genetic code book to unlock the information embedded in these sequences.”
Put another way, it’s a bit like knowing chapter titles but with the rest of the pages still blank.
Efforts to fill in the blanks are broadly captured in an ongoing international effort called the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE), and include the work of Ren and colleagues. In particular, they have investigated the role and function of chromatin, a complex of DNA and proteins that form chromosomes within the nuclei of eukaryotic cells.
More:
https://www.newswise.com/articles/illuminating-dark-matter-in-human-dna
