A few months ago, much ado was made about results from the ENCODE project on the human genome, publicized as having made the discovery that 80% of the human genome has a biochemical function. While this is true (with ‘biochemical function’ being defined loosely and broadly), we don’t yet know how or why most of the long stretch of DNA in our cells is important. ‘Genes’ as we know them make up less than 2% of the total DNA. What purpose does the rest of it serve?
What Purpose does “Junk DNA” Serve?
The ENCODE project suggested that the rest of the genome had a strong regulatory potential. How do our cells control when to turn on certain genes, when to ramp up production of one protein and when to slow down? A lot of these regulatory mechanisms remain unknown. A team of researchers at Wistar Institute have now discovered one additional mechanism of regulation.
Before we move on, let’s briefly review how genes function. ‘Genes’ are essentially regions of the genome which are processed into intermediate molecules called ‘RNA’, also linear strings. These RNA strings are further processed to yield the protein that performs the gene’s function. Think of the gene as a ‘recipe’ for a protein, with the RNA molecule being the unfinished product halfway along the recipe. There are, however, some regions of the genome which are processed to form RNAs, but do not form proteins. They often have regulatory functions.
Long Non-Coding RNAs Regulate Gene Expression
Moving back to the research team, they had previously discovered that a class of these ‘non-coding RNAs’, which they have termed ‘ncRNA-a’, serve to activate processing of their neighbouring genes. But how do they do this? There are certain proteins called mediators which facilitate the processing of genes to RNA. They have now discovered that ncRNA-a helps these mediator proteins bind to these genes at the right place. To determine this, the team removed proteins known to be involved in gene processing (called transcription) one by one, and looked for changes in ncRNA-a mediated activation. And voilà, components of the mediator complex came up immediately. They also found that the chromosome forms a loop between the ncRNA-a locus and the gene locus, for the mediator complex to be able to gain a stronghold at the gene locus using the ncRNA-a as a base.
Why is this result important? It gives us a better idea of the factors controlling gene expression. And as importantly, it helps us understand our DNA just a little better. You can read about this research here.