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The Scientist : First pages of regulation "Encyclopedia"
June 2007
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By Melissa Lee Phillips
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First pages of
regulation
"Encyclopedia"
Many regulatory sequences in the human genome are
not conserved
[Published 13th June 2007 05:02 PM GMT]
http://www.the-scientist.com/news/home/53280/
Approximately half of the functional regulatory
sequences in the human genome appear to lack
conserved sequences, according to an analysis of
functional elements in 1% of the genome. The
finding comes from the four-year pilot ENCODE
Encyclopedia of DNA Elements project, whose
results are published in this week's Nature.
This lack of evolutionary constraint is "clearly one
of the most interesting findings in the paper," said
Eric Schadt of Rosetta Inpharmatics in Seattle,
Wash., who was not involved in the work. It's
possible that variations in regulatory sequences
between people could help explain individual
differences in disease susceptibility, giving these
findings "huge implications," Schadt told Nature.
The ENCODE project also analyzed many other
aspects of functional non-coding regions of the
human genome. "Finally, we're going to be able to
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6/13/2007