From ScienceDaily:
A person’s DNA sequence can provide a lot of information about how genes are turned on and off, but new research out of Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine suggests the 3-D structure DNA forms as it crams into cells may provide an additional layer of gene control. As long strands of DNA twist and fold, regions far away from each other suddenly find themselves in close proximity. The revolutionary study suggests interactions between distant regions may affect how genes are expressed in certain diseases.
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According to Scacheri, “The big surprise was when we crunched the numbers and compared the risk associated with the amount of heritability that could be explained by the outside variants. By our calculations, outside variants accounted for a whopping 2-3 times more of the heritability than explained by the current models. That was far more than we had expected.”
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According to Scacheri, “The big surprise was when we crunched the numbers and compared the risk associated with the amount of heritability that could be explained by the outside variants. By our calculations, outside variants accounted for a whopping 2-3 times more of the heritability than explained by the current models. That was far more than we had expected.” Paper. (paywall) – Olivia Corradin, Andrea J Cohen, Jennifer M Luppino, Ian M Bayles, Fredrick R Schumacher, Peter C Scacheri. Modeling disease risk through analysis of physical interactions between genetic variants within chromatin regulatory circuitry. Nature Genetics, 2016; DOI: 10.1038/ng.3674 More.
And all that just sort of happens, the way a room tidies itself if you ignore it.
See also: Even New Scientist now seems to accept that it’s time to rethink how evolution works.
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