News: New data suggest 'jumping genes' play a significant role in gene regulatory networks
- From: "Robert Karl Stonjek" <rstonjek@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 16 Feb 2009 12:35:01 -0500 (EST)
New data suggest 'jumping genes' play a significant role in gene regulatory
networks
February 14th, 2009 in General Science / Biology
Research performed in the Center for Biomolecular Science & Engineering
(CBSE) at the University of California, Santa Cruz, suggests that mobile
repetitive elements--also known as transposons or "jumping genes"--do indeed
affect the evolution of gene regulatory networks.
David Haussler, CBSE director and distinguished professor of biomolecular
engineering at UCSC's Jack Baskin School of Engineering, said CBSE research
teams are finding evidence that the early theories of Nobel Prize winner
Barbara McClintock, later modeled by Roy Britten and Eric Davidson, are
correct. Haussler will discuss these findings in a presentation on
"Transposon-induced rewriting of vertebrate gene regulation" at the annual
meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in
Chicago.
"Comparison of the human genome with the genomes of other species reveals
that at least five percent of the human genome has been under negative
selection during most of mammalian evolution," Haussler said. "We believe
that this five percent is, therefore, likely to be functional."
Coding exons and structural RNA genes stand out because of their distinctive
pattern of base substitutions and "indels"--the insertions and deletions of
nucleic acid bases that can change the message in a genome. According to
Haussler, however, most of the DNA under negative selection in vertebrate
genomes does not appear to be transcribed and shares no sequence similarity
with the genomes of invertebrates.
"Our research suggests that many of these elements serve as distal enhancers
for developmental genes," Haussler said. "A significant amount of the gene
regulatory material appears to have indeed been put into place by ancient
transposons."
Source: University of California - Santa Cruz
http://www.physorg.com/news153830937.html
Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek
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