The Mysteries of Dark DNA By Katherine Lightwood

The Mysteries of Dark DNA

By Katherine Lightwood

I was scrolling through the internet when I found an amazing article on nature magazine and it was a fairly new topic for me. It was about the Dark DNA. I was feeling dizzy with sleep but this article planted a seed of excitement and me and the nerd inside me just woke up. So, what was it? Allow me to explain you.

Dark matter is one of the biggest mysteries of astronomy today. There's tons of evidence that it's there but we haven't been able to find it. And in biology, there's a similar problem: Dark DNA. When scientists were exploring the sequenced genome of certain birds and rodents they noticed something odd. A sequenced genome means everything is laid bare, and yet certain DNA sequences are missing which were weird because these DNA sequences were very important. They controlled the production of leptin in birds or secretion of insulin in the rodents. Genes that the scientists knew had to be there. Otherwise, they would have some obese chicken and dead rodents on their hands.

The scientists studying the rodents found the products of the missing DNA sequences on their cells so they deduced that the genes weren't missing but were hidden. They dubbed these elusive sequences dark DNA. And this dark DNA may be more of a blind spot in our DNA sequencing technology than anything else. A closer look at the rodent's genome found a heavily mutated section with the abnormally high amount of guanine and cytosine, two of the DNA's four base molecules called G and C for short. It turns out GC reach sequences are difficult to detect, so the researchers miss this mutated pocket of DNA at first.

This dark DNA raises questions about how quickly mutations occur and what gees we may have missed when we sequenced other genomes like our own. Which is crazy to think that there could be more DNA in us than we ever realized. Especially when you consider that when we know what 1 to 2% of the stuff we have found does.Those sections code proteins that have some functions. The other 98%-ish doesn't make anything so we don't know why it's there. This vast amount of genetic code has also been referred to as DNA's dark matter.

Apparently, biologist love DNA's dark matter analogy, only the kind I am talking about is the opposite of the first example. Instead of what a gene does but not finding it, we've found a lot of genes but have no idea what they do. And maybe this is the most exciting thing about science that has driven many scientists and biologist to keep on searching, the mystery of unknown.

So, that was my thought of the day. To see more posts like this make sure to visit our main page. And Do not forget to visit our institute's page to know more about graphic design, 3D, animation courses and other awesome stuff. Till then good day to you.

Katherine Lightwood