Researchers from Oxford Nanopore Technologies, Weill Cornell Medicine and New York Genome Center have come up with a technology through which they can find the three-dimensional structure of the human DNA, or the way in which the genome folds on a huge scale. The genome is considered as the entire set of genetic instructions, either DNA or RNA, which allows an organism to perform.

HIGHLIGHTS
The technology helps to find the three-dimensional structure of the human DNA
The genome structure gave wonderful insights along with certain key limitations
In future it would help to explore the specific groupings of genomic components

Using this method, the researchers had showed that groups of regulatory elements in the genome which simultaneously interact might have an influence on the cell activity along with gene expression. The research was recently published on the journal Nature Biotechnology, which could help to clarify the connectivity between cellular identity and genome structure.

As per a senior author Dr. Marcin Imieliński, also an associate professor at Weill Cornell Medicine and a core member of the New York Genome Center, “Knowing the three-dimensional genome structure would facilitate the researchers with better understanding of the way genome functions, and the way it encodes different cell identities.” He even mentioned that “The ways in which we have been studying genome structure has given us wonderful insights, but with this there are certain key limitations as well.”

Dr. Imieliński and his research team have developed statistical methods in which they could find out which locus groupings were important on the basis of whether they interacted in a cooperative manner to affect the gene expression. As per Dr. Imieliński, “well most of the three-dimensional interactions of the genome don't seem to be necessary.” “Our analytic ways could help us to prioritize the group interactions that are likely to matter for genome functions.” The researchers have found out as a key finding of the study that the foremost important cooperative groupings of DNA elements occurred around genes related to cell identity.

Future experiments would help to explore better about the specific groupings of genomic components which are essential for numerous aspects of cell identity. The new technology could help the researchers to get an understanding about the stem cells, the immature, master cells of the body, differentiate into completely different cell varieties.

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