Noncoding DNA Architecture Is Not Random - Ssu-Yu Yeh in Nature Communications
Shu-Yu Yeh is a PhD student in Dr. Ho-Sung Rhee Lab and she co-authored this paper with Ravneet Jaura, former research scientist in Rhee Lab.
This paper addresses a key fundamental question in the field of molecular biology: how noncoding DNA regions, composing 98% of the mammalian genome, are organized to regulate cell-type-specific gene expression programs. Most noncoding DNA in mammals resides in intergenic DNA, DNA regions between two neighboring genes. Here the authors present long intergenic DNA length-dependent neural gene expression, reflecting the complexity in the mammalian nervous system. They found that the intergenic regions of neuronal genes have a number of neural tissue-specific active enhancers containing distinct transcription factor binding sites specific to each neural tissue. They also showed that genes with extended intergenic regions are enriched for neuronal genes only in vertebrates. This paper may garner broad interest because of the idea that noncoding DNA architecture is not random but instead is uniquely organized in the nervous system.
