$3.3M effort to map human genome’s intricate folding pattern – Baylor College of Medicine News (press release)

The National Institutes of Health today announced eight mapping centers that will help lead the next four-year phase of its Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) Project, whose purpose is to identify all of the functional elements contained in the human genome. These eight laboratories include the Center for Genome Architecture (TC4GA) at Baylor College of Medicine, which will be responsible for mapping how the genome folds inside the nucleus of roughly 100 different types of cells. Led by Dr. Erez Lieberman Aiden, McNair Scholar and assistant professor of genetics at Baylor and Rice University, TC4GA has received $3.3 million to fund its role in the mapping effort.

The ENCODE Project was launched by the NIHs National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) in 2003, in the wake of the completion of the first drafts of the human genomes 3 billion letter sequence. ENCODEs goal is to decode that sequence by cataloging all the functional pieces of the human genome and to determine what each one does. These sequences include both genes and regulatory elements the parts of the genome that control when genes turn on and off. ENCODEs mapping centers play a crucial role in this effort. Each center is responsible for mapping one or more types of DNA sequence elements. The overall goal is to create a catalog that can serve as a resource for the entire scientific community.

The basic idea of the ENCODE project is to create extremely detailed maps of different types of features in the genome, Aiden said. Then, when we put all of these maps together, the whole is much more valuable than each of the parts.

The award to TC4GA marks the first time that ENCODE has funded a center dedicated to producing comprehensive maps of genome folding. Aiden explains that, if stretched out from end-to-end, the DNA in each cell of the human body would be over six feet long. But the DNA has to fold up to fit inside the cell's nucleus, which is less than a thousandth of an inch wide.

This fold is not merely a way of packing a long DNA strand into a tiny space. The folding pattern is different for a heart cell that beats, a brain cell that thinks, or an immune cell that fights disease, Aiden said.

The compact folding within the nucleus leads the genome to bend back on itself, so that two pieces that lie far apart along the DNA molecule like a gene and its regulatory element can come close together in the cell nucleus. Having a better understanding of where these loops occur genome-wide also will lead to a better understanding of gene regulation.

There are certain features that the research community feels are important to know about if we want a better understanding of how the genome works, Aiden said. The goal of the mapping centers is to think about these different types of features in the genome and how to detect and record them in some standardized fashion. It has become increasingly clear that genome folding plays an important role in many cellular processes. So our center will be dedicated to characterizing how the genome folds.

View post:
$3.3M effort to map human genome's intricate folding pattern - Baylor College of Medicine News (press release)