A tiny percentage of our DNA—around 2%—contains 20,000-odd genes. The remaining 98%—long known as the non-coding genome, or ...

The study shows that a long non-coding RNA called CISTR-ACT acts as a master regulator of cell size, influencing how large or ...

Researchers have revealed that so-called “junk DNA” contains powerful switches that help control brain cells linked to ...

The puzzle seems impossible: take a three-billion-letter code and predict what happens if you swap a single letter. The code we’re talking about—the human genome—stores most of its instructions in ...

Non-coding DNA variants contribute to acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) chemotherapy resistance. St. Jude Children's Research Hospital scientists have identified specific DNA variants in the ...

Despite progress in defining functional elements of noncoding DNA, it is still not fully understood. UCLA researchers, using an experiment that elucidated the function of tens of thousands of ...

Noncoding elements in the genome, such as enhancers, silencers, and insulators, play important roles in gene expression and thus cellular behavior. Therefore, these elements may be of particular ...

Imagine the human genome as a string stretching out for the length of a football field, with all the genes that encode proteins clustered at the end near your feet. Take two big steps forward; all the ...

The human genome contains about 20,000 protein-coding genes, but that only accounts for roughly two percent of the genome. For many years, it was easier for scientists to simply ignore all of that ...

Scientists have been alert to genetic drivers of cancer that are embedded in the transcriptome, which consists of DNA’s coding regions. Beyond the transcriptome, in the wider genome, lurk additional ...

Much of the "junk" DNA in Drosophila shows signs of either negative or positive selection, according to a study in this week's Nature. An analysis by Peter Andolfatto of the University of California, ...