The fifth part of the human genome was useless
In the human genome can be encoded in 20% less information than previously thought. An international group of scientists revealed in a new study that only 80% of the genes in human DNA really code for any proteins, and the rest had lost this ability. The study is published in the journal Nucleic Acids Research.
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In the human genome there are 23 pairs of chromosomes in them, and about 28 000 genes. However, not all of them carry the genetic information needed for protein synthesis. Some perform a kind of auxiliary functions and others do nothing at all. Such plots are called pseudogenes — they evolved from the normal genes, but in the process of evolution and many mutations have lost the ability to encode proteins. A group of scientists from Spain, UK and USA, found that one-fifth of the human genome is non-functional pseudogene.
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The authors compared the database from three different research projects genome: GENCODE/Ensembl, RefSeq and UniProtKB. All scientists have found 22 210 genes that carry information about any protein. But only 19 446 of them were in all three databases. Then the researchers proceeded to the analysis of the remaining 2 764 genes and found that almost all of them actually pseudogene, that is, do not encode any protein. Moreover, this number is added 1470 genes that were identified in all three databases.
All as a result of the study, the researchers found 4 234 pseudogenes. This information is added to the database of the international project, GENCODE. Now scientists need to test these data, a detailed study of each of the detected pseudogenes. Status”, pseudogene” after checking’ve already got 300 of them.