A CHALLENGE is being made to the prevailing theory, underpinning all modern genetics, that explains how our DNA is transcribed. We know that genes are copied into RNA and then translated into proteins. But scientists have now found that other non-coding parts of the genome produce unexpectedly large amounts of RNA, although the function of this extra genetic material is unclear.
“It turns out that we have mischaracterised the architecture of the genome,” says Tom Gingeras of Affymetrix, the company in Santa Clara, California, that led the collaborative analysis with several academic teams. Their work suggests that when a gene is read, some non-coding “junk” DNA,…
