new-science
Structural DNA: Researchers Find Functional Information in DNA Topography
July 7th 2009 01:44
It’s not just what a DNA sequence says, but how it looks. NHGRI’s Elliott Margulies and Boston University’s Thomas Tullius found that certain topographical features of a stretch of DNA — particularly when conserved across species — are correlated to its function. “When we think of primary sequences being conserved throughout evolution, we think that those sequences are maintained because they do some important function. And now we are extending that onto the structural topography of DNA,” Margulies says.
Margulies had been trying to think up new ways to look at DNA and study its function when he came across Steve Parker, who was investigating how DNA topography related to functional elements within a species. “This made me think, gosh, if we can convert this DNA topography across a bunch of species, it’ll give us a different way of looking at similarities in DNA,” Margulies says. Parker is the first author on the new Science paper.
Source: Genome Technology May 2009
Margulies had been trying to think up new ways to look at DNA and study its function when he came across Steve Parker, who was investigating how DNA topography related to functional elements within a species. “This made me think, gosh, if we can convert this DNA topography across a bunch of species, it’ll give us a different way of looking at similarities in DNA,” Margulies says. Parker is the first author on the new Science paper.
Source: Genome Technology May 2009
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