Penn State Researchers discover ‘dark matter’ in human genome

Dark matter makes up most of the universe and astronomers dont know what it is. Much like the universe, the human genome is mostly dark matter too, except scientists now know where this dark matter originates.

A Penn State research duo discovered where that dark matter non-coding RNA in the human genome originates from.

B. Franklin Pugh , the Penn State Willaman Chair in Molecular Biology and one of the two researchers, said this dark matter makes up more than 95 percent of the human genome.

The research, which was also conducted by Penn State postdoctoral scholar Bryan Venters , was published on Sept. 18 as an Advance Online Publication in Nature, according to a Penn State News release .

With dark matter making up a significant portion of the human genome, Venters, who is now an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University, said the researchers considered the question: Are the RNA transcripts regulated or randomly generated?

The origin of non-coding RNA is not that different from the origin of protein coding genes, Venters said.

[The researchers] discovered hundreds of thousands of sites in the human genome where molecular machinery is engaging with DNA to produce RNA, Shaun Mahony , assistant professor in the department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology , said via email.

RNA, whether it codes for proteins or not, originates from initiation sites, sometimes called promoter sites, Pugh said.

In order to find these sites, the team narrowed their search space by developing a high-resolution method to figure out where a protein binds in the genomes and then applied it, Pugh said. Trying to just find these promoter sites would be like searching for a needle in a haystack, he added.

The technique allowed the team to see with a higher clarity and level of detail so they could see initiation sites that existed in dark matter, Venters said.

Original post:
Penn State Researchers discover ‘dark matter’ in human genome