Like the famous living deserts of the Southwest, the so-called “gene deserts” in our DNA are teeming with activity. The trick is knowing where to look for it. A new roadmap to the location of DNA segments that are significant in medical, biological and evolutionary research could emerge from studies published today (Dec. 9) by scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and their colleagues. The work is reported in the online version of the journal Genome Research.Gene deserts are long stretches of DNA between genes that were once thought to have no biological function, and were dismissed as “junk DNA.” As scientists probe deeper into the DNA’s double helix, however, they are discovering that many of these “non-coding” segments actually play an important role in regulating gene activity.
