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PODCAST: This Week's Interview (July 02, 2009)

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INTERVIEW: WHY JUNK DNA IS NOT TRASH - Inteview with Kevin Verstrepen, Ph.D., Group Leader, Laboratory of Systems Biology, Flanders Institute for Biotechnology, and Associate Professor, Biological Engineering, Catholic University of Leuven

Flanders Institute for Biotechnology scientists associated with the Catholic University of Leuven and Harvard University report that stretches of nucleic acids previously believed to be useless junk DNA play a vital role in the evolution of our genome. As reported in the May 29 issue of Science, the researchers found that unstable pieces of junk DNA help tune the activity of genes and enable organisms to quickly adapt to changes in their environments.

During this week's podcast Dr. Kevin Verstrepen explains why most scientists once considered noncoding DNA unimportant and then what happened to turn this perception of junk DNA around. Noting that the number of tandem repeats changes frequently when DNA is copied, he discusses how local DNA packaging is affected and gene activity altered. Dr. Verstrepen describes the resultant impact on the evolution of an organism.

Dr. Verstrepen goes on to talk about the experimental procedure his team carried out with S. cerevisiae to demonstrate that tandem repeats may facilitate evolutionary tuning of gene expression by affecting local chromatin structure. He also provides some hints on the next phase of this research.

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Regional head, clinical pathology, IDEXX, Dallas, TX

by: Dean Cornwell

7/2/2009

Have genes that make MRSA resistant to Methicillin been studied to see if they are close to a repeat region of the genome?


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