🧬 AI decodes DNA initiator sequence found in about 60% of human genes
To fully understand specific sequences within DNA that enable gene activation, researchers in University of California San Diego Professor James T. Kadonaga's laboratory set out to decipher an important segment of DNA known as the "initiator." This is the site at which instructions coded in genes are first converted, or expressed, into functional products.
In the new study led by graduate student researcher Torrey Rhyne-Carrigg, scientists used high-throughput DNA sequencing technology to determine the gene expression activity of approximately 500,000 different versions of the initiator.
With this information, they employed machine learning, to create an AI model that decoded the initiator's signature DNA pattern. With the initiator's DNA identity unmasked, the researchers could then search for its telltale sequence, finding that about 60% of human genes contain the initiator.
The newly uncovered information gives researchers the ability to predict the effects of DNA mutations that can lead to various disorders tied to the initiator. 🚀
@QSIMedia
To fully understand specific sequences within DNA that enable gene activation, researchers in University of California San Diego Professor James T. Kadonaga's laboratory set out to decipher an important segment of DNA known as the "initiator." This is the site at which instructions coded in genes are first converted, or expressed, into functional products.
In the new study led by graduate student researcher Torrey Rhyne-Carrigg, scientists used high-throughput DNA sequencing technology to determine the gene expression activity of approximately 500,000 different versions of the initiator.
With this information, they employed machine learning, to create an AI model that decoded the initiator's signature DNA pattern. With the initiator's DNA identity unmasked, the researchers could then search for its telltale sequence, finding that about 60% of human genes contain the initiator.
"These AI models were found to provide, for the first time, strong predictions of the presence or absence of the initiator in human genes and were thus able to decode the DNA base sequence pattern of the initiator," — said Kadonaga, a professor in the UC San Diego Department of Molecular Biology.
The newly uncovered information gives researchers the ability to predict the effects of DNA mutations that can lead to various disorders tied to the initiator. 🚀
@QSIMedia