Thaindian News

London, July 17 (ANI): Repeated instructional regions in the DNA of fruit fly may contribute to normal development under less-than-ideal growth conditions by making sure that genes are turned on and off at the appropriate times, new research reveals.

If similar regions are found in humans, they may hold important clues to understanding developmental disorders.

The results of the Princeton-led study appear in the journal Nature.

The findings add to the growing body of evidence that so-called “junk DNA” is anything but rubbish. The term “junk DNA” is commonly used to describe the portion of the genome that doesn’t contain genes, which are pieces of DNA that code for the production of proteins and other molecules that have specific functions. The noncoding region is often surprisingly large; in humans, some 98 percent of the genome merits “junk” status. But according to David Stern, a Princeton professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, scientists increasingly believe “junk DNA” is crucial for turning the information encoded in genes into useful products.

Stern, the senior scientist on the paper, said: “Over the past 10 to 20 years, research has shown that instructional regions outside the protein-coding region are important for regulating when genes are turned on and off. Now we’re finding that additional copies of these genetic instructions are important for maintaining stable gene function even in a variable environment, so that genes produce the right output for organisms to develop normally.”

He added: “To interpret and fully understand the genome, we need to think of it from an ecological and evolutionary perspective. Its purpose is to produce a healthy organism in a variable environment, so a good portion of it has evolved to deal with contingencies that organisms will experience in the real world.” (ANI)