Today, the work of molecular biologists is largely focused on a far from simple task: understanding the language through which DNA is expressed to build the prodigious machinery of a living being. Published by e-Life magazine, a new study by an international team of researchers proposes a novel and suggestive metaphor to illuminate the intricate pathways of the genome.
First of all, we must remember that DNA has, broadly speaking, two types of regions , as experts call them: those that encode proteins and those that do not encode or regulate . While the former are expressed as traffic signs –with “stop” and “forward” messages – the regulatory sequences, the authors of the work explain, would have more to do with poetry.
” Emily Dickinson, Shakespeare or Allen Ginsberg use words to evoke thoughts and emotions , that is, to control or” regulate “the message. Now that we enter an era in which the DNA sequences of entire populations are increasingly accessible, we want to know the functional significance of the changes that occur in regulatory sections, ”explains David Arnosti, professor at Michigan State University and main author of the research.
To reach this conclusion, scientists have studied gene expression in about a thousand embryos of the fruit fly ( Drosophila melanogaster ), common in this type of experiment. Specifically, they have examined how a regulatory factor called Dorsal works , which controls the expression of a fly gene called rhomboid, and which is also linked to a human gene that is very important for the immune system and inflammatory processes in disease . The goal is to create a mathematical model that can then be applied to other non-coding sequences.
“Using this approach, we can do something similar to when in a literature class we read a haiku or a Shakespearean sonnet to establish whether they are love poems or elegies , for example. We will understand how words –the elements of DNA– are used in different contexts to adopt different meanings in gene regulation ”, adds Arnosti.
Interpreting the “poetic” messages of the regulatory regions will allow, for example, to better understand the differences in genetic expression between the healthy tissue of an individual and another that has developed a tumor in order to know what exactly has happened and thus fine-tune the treatments .
