Mysterious 'Ultraconserved' Regions Of DNA Survive Eons Of Evolution

Wednesday, October 1, 2008 - 18:07 in Biology & Nature

Small stretches of DNA with unknown utility harbor a big secret, say researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine, but they don't know what it is. Those secrets are always the biggest. Individual laboratory animals appear to live happily when these genetic ciphers are deleted so why these snippets have been highly conserved throughout evolution is the real mystery. Small stretches of seemingly useless DNA harbor a big secret, say researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine. There's one problem: We don't know what it is. Although individual laboratory animals appear to live happily when these genetic ciphers are deleted, these snippets have been highly conserved throughout evolution. Read More...

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