New Class of Genes Discovered

HarryGenes writes "Reuters is reporting that Scientists Find New Type of Gene in Junk DNA. The research from Harvard Medical School describes a discovery in the Yeast Genome of a new class of gene that regulates the neighboring gene through the production of its RNA product. This has much broader implications than the article lets on to. Assuming these same type of genes exist in Humans and other organisms, the whole science behind gene expression and gene mapping will be changed dramatically. This type of mechanism can explain a lot of the 'unexplainable'. This is really exciting. I have been working in gene mapping for years and always felt that the 'junk' was there for a reason."

Comments

Good article

[cariaso1]

Until this article was published, 'junk dna' would be considered the correct term for this region. Broadly speaking, the term suggests that there is no known function for the region. We don't know much beyon "is a region is a coding region?" and "is a region regulatory?". Now this region can be classified as regulatory, but it uses a mechanism never before observed. That is news.

Much more information can be found in this article taken from pubmed.

Stealth regulation: biological circuits with small RNA switches