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 ...

The non-coding genome, once dismissed as "junk DNA", is now recognized as a fundamental regulator of gene expression and a key player in understanding complex diseases. Following the landmark ...

The accumulation of mutations in DNA is often mentioned as an explanation for the aging process, but it remains just one hypothesis among many. A team from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), in ...

When AlphaFold solved the protein-folding problem in 2020, it showed that artificial intelligence could crack one of biology’s deepest mysteries: how a string of amino acids folds itself into a ...

Researchers have revealed that so-called ‘junk DNA’ contains powerful switches that help control brain cells linked to Alzheimer’s disease. When people picture DNA, they often imagine a set of genes ...

Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNA) are a type of RNA molecule that do not carry instructions to make proteins. Instead, they influence how other genes are expressed. There are tens of thousands of lncRNAs ...

Scientists have found new genetic causes for diabetes in babies – in a part of the genome that has historically been overlooked in genetic studies. Until recently, most research has investigated ...

Northwestern Medicine scientists have discovered that a specific long non-coding RNA activates oncogenic signaling pathways in prostate cancer cells and drives tumor progression, underscoring its ...

With completion of the Human Genome Project, researchers uncovered roughly 20,000 genes coding for mRNAs destined to be translated into proteins. 1 These account for only about two percent of the ...

Only around two percent of the human genome codes for proteins, and while those proteins carry out many important functions of the cell, the rest of the genome cannot be ignored. However, for decades ...