Second Layer Of Information In DNA Confirmed

Second Layer of Information in DNA Confirmed

Erik Arends | June 8, 2016

Leiden theoretical physicists have proven that DNA mechanics, in addition to genetic information in DNA, determines who we are. Helmut Schiessel and his group simulated many DNA sequences and found a correlation between mechanical cues and the way DNA is folded. They have published their results in PLoS One.

Leiden Institute. Source: http://www.physics.leidenuniv.nl/index.php?id=11573&news=889&type=LION&ln=EN

<more at http://phys.org/news/2016-06-layer-dna.html; related articles and links: http://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-confirm-a-second-layer-of-information-hiding-in-dna (Physicists confirm there's a second layer of information hidden in our DNA. Incredible. June 9, 2016) and http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0156905 (Multiplexing Genetic and Nucleosome Positioning Codes: A Computational Approach. Behrouz Eslami-Mossallam, Raoul D. Schram, Marco Tompitak, John van Noort and Helmut Schiessel. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0156905 Publised June 7, 2016. [Abstract: Eukaryotic DNA is strongly bent inside fundamental packaging units: the nucleosomes. It is known that their positions are strongly influenced by the mechanical properties of the underlying DNA sequence. Here we discuss the possibility that these mechanical properties and the concomitant nucleosome positions are not just a side product of the given DNA sequence, e.g. that of the genes, but that a mechanical evolution of DNA molecules might have taken place. We first demonstrate the possibility of multiplexing classical and mechanical genetic information using a computational nucleosome model. In a second step we give evidence for genome-wide multiplexing in Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Schizosacharomyces pombe. This suggests that the exact positions of nucleosomes play crucial roles in chromatin function.])>