The quest to crack the genetic code of gene expression
- From: "whitesickle@xxxxxxx" <whitesickle@xxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2006 13:40:02 -0500 (EST)
Biospace Beat
Cracking The Genetic Code For Control Of Gene Expression
Molecular biologists, developmental biologists and computer scientists
at the Universtity of Helsinki, Finland, came together to advance
towards cracking the code for how gene expression is controlled. The
results of this work are published in Cell, in January 2006. A genome
milestone was reached in 2001 when sequencing of the human genome was
completed. This has been followed by complete chemical read-outs of DNA
sequence for several species, for example mouse, dog, cow and chicken,
in the recent years. But without a code or 'grammar' to reveal the
message behind the sequence, the genomic DNA is merely a list of
millions and millions of base pairs, A's, C's, G's and T's one after
the other. Based on the universal code by which DNA encodes amino
acids, we can make sense of the constantly increasing amout of DNA
sequence data as far as it encodes proteins. This code was solved in
1966 and it has allowed researchers to find new genes and estimate the
total number of genes in the human genome. However, coding sequence
covers only about 1.2% of the human genome. New codes and grammatical
rules need to be resolved in order to understand the remaining 98.8% of
the genome. It is evident that genes are expressed in tightly
controlled spatial and temporal patterns but we do not know the code by
which the expression is regulated. In this post-genomic era, the next
big goal is to decipher the genetic code of regulation of gene
expression. At the University of Helsinki the researchers have been
interested in sequences which regulate gene expression. The research
group, led by professor Jussi Taipale, Ph.D, has defined the binding
specificities of several transcription factors. Transcription factors
are DNA-binding proteins which are required to activate gene
expression. In collaboration biologists and computer scientists
designed a software called EEL (enhancer element locator) which
searches genomic sequence for regions where many transcription factors
bind DNA side by side. Finding the same region with high frequency of
transcription factors in several species indicates that the DNA element
regulates gene expression. The researchers showed that the predicted
regulatory elements direct organ-specific expression of a marker gene
in transgenic mice. Novel experimental and computational methods
enabled genome-wide analysis of regulatory elements in several species.
Studying the control of gene expression is a growing area of research
at the moment, likely owing to its fundamental importance to many
biological processes. The findings of the Finnish scientists have
implications to the study of cancer, evolution, development biology and
many other areas of biology. The work revealed a potential mechanism
explaining why many different genes are linked to cancer.
.
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