Reading between the genes

Research news For a long time dismissed as "junk DNA", we now know that also the regions between the genes fulfil vital functions. Mutations in those DNA regions can severely impair development in humans and may lead to serious diseases later in life. Until now, however, regulatory DNA regions have been hard to find. Scientists around Prof. Julien Gagneur, Professor for Computational Biology at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and Prof. Patrick Cramer at the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen have now developed a method to find regulatory DNA regions which are active and controlling genes. The genes in our DNA contain detailed assembly instructions for proteins, the "workers" carrying out and controlling virtually all processes in our cells. To ensure that each protein fulfils its tasks at the right time in the right place of our body, the activity of the corresponding gene has to be tightly controlled. This function is taken over by regulatory DNA regions between the genes, which act as a complex control machinery.