IN 3D MAPS OF THE FOLDED GENOME, A CATALOG OF 10,000 LOOPS
REVEALS A NEW FORM OF GENETIC REGULATION
In a triumph for cell biology, researchers have assembled
the first high-resolution, 3D maps of entire folded genomes and found a
structural basis for gene regulation—a kind of "genomic origami" that
allows the same genome to produce different types of cells. The research
appears online today in Cell.
A central goal of the five-year project, a collaboration
between researchers at Harvard University, Baylor College of Medicine, Rice
University, and the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, was to identify the loops
in the human genome. Loops form when two bits of DNA that are far apart in the
genome sequence end up in close contact in the folded version of the genome in
a cell's nucleus.