3 ms·

The article says "second layer." Apparently someone hasn't heard of methylation, introns and start and stop codons, and palindromic sequences. Or any results fr

The article says "second layer." Apparently someone hasn't heard of methylation, introns and start and stop codons, and palindromic sequences. Or any results from the last fifty years of DNA and RNA research. If this is ever a thing, it will be way beyond the fifth or maybe tenth layer of information in DNA.

dave2000 10y ago
I'm almost entirely ignorant on this topic but it sounds like you're suggesting this could be a thing, which is more than the other posters here are currently saying (although it's early days yet, with only a handful of comments). The things you've just mentioned sound like properties of the sequences, whereas the site sounds like it's describing something which modifies the meaning of the sequences depending on how they're physically located. Ie if gtta is resting next to tacg or whatever it'll have a different meaning to if it was next to gata.
- aroch 10y ago
  WildUtah is referring to chemical modifications (methylation, associated with epigenetics: http://www.whatisepigenetics.com/dna-methylation/ http://www.whatisepigenetics.com/dna-methylation/), the structure of [eukaryotic] genes (intron/exon, start and stop; things many elementary students know of -- and subsequently forget) and palindromic elements. Palindromic elements are most closely related to what the linked paper is about. Basically, instead of existing as a normal double helix, the two strands separate and bind with the palindrome on the same strand; like making an X with DNA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palindromic_sequence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palindromic_sequence . Ultimately, this is a crappy press release for a paper that, as _of points out, is scientifically correct but otherwise dull. The paper is going back to first principles, as it were, for DNA and looking at factors in DNA alone that contribute to its function (well, 'normal', non-methylated, potentially histone associated DNA).

dave2000 10y ago

I'm almost entirely ignorant on this topic but it sounds like you're suggesting this could be a thing, which is more than the other posters here are currently saying (although it's early days yet, with only a handful of comments). The things you've just mentioned sound like properties of the sequences, whereas the site sounds like it's describing something which modifies the meaning of the sequences depending on how they're physically located. Ie if gtta is resting next to tacg or whatever it'll have a different meaning to if it was next to gata.

aroch 10y ago
WildUtah is referring to chemical modifications (methylation, associated with epigenetics: http://www.whatisepigenetics.com/dna-methylation/ http://www.whatisepigenetics.com/dna-methylation/), the structure of [eukaryotic] genes (intron/exon, start and stop; things many elementary students know of -- and subsequently forget) and palindromic elements. Palindromic elements are most closely related to what the linked paper is about. Basically, instead of existing as a normal double helix, the two strands separate and bind with the palindrome on the same strand; like making an X with DNA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palindromic_sequence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palindromic_sequence . Ultimately, this is a crappy press release for a paper that, as _of points out, is scientifically correct but otherwise dull. The paper is going back to first principles, as it were, for DNA and looking at factors in DNA alone that contribute to its function (well, 'normal', non-methylated, potentially histone associated DNA).