The Repeats That Make Us Human
The human genome is filled with redundancies. Long stretches of DNA repeat themselves in patterns that resemble stuttering speech on a page. For years, these sequences have sat in the shadows of genetic research, dismissed as structural clutter or simply too difficult to parse.
But a new study in Cell1 is making the case that some of these repeats may have played a central role in human brain evolution. By focusing on a little-studied class of recently duplicated genes, researchers have found two that influence brain development in ways that are potentially unique to our species. The work also opens a door into how these regions might contribute to neurological conditions such as autism and language disorders.
“Historically, this has been a very challenging problem,” said Megan Dennis, senior author and associate director of genomics at UC Davis Genome Center. “People didn’t know where to start.”
Now they do.
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