On October 12, 2011 MIT published a research paper exploring so called ‘dark-matter’ in the human genome.  Twenty-nine species were looked at including humans and primates.  Supposedly researchers have discovered the part of the genome that REGULATES the turning on and off off genes.  The publication hailed this as a positive discovery because it could expose genetic links which cause disease.  The article goes on to say, “regulatory information that controls genes dwarfs the information in the genes themselves”.  Is this a true scientific finding or is just another promo piece for regulation down to the cellular level justifying its sustainability and existence?  The study was conducted by Broad Institute, MIT, Washington University in St. Louis and Baylor College of Medicine with project was support by the National Human Genome Research Institute, the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, the European Science Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, an Erwin Schrödinger Fellowship, the Gates Cambridge Trust, the Novo Nordisk Foundation, the University of Copenhagen, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Danish Council for Independent Research Medical Sciences and the Lundbeck Foundation.

“With just a few species, we didn’t have the power to pinpoint individual regions of regulatory control,” says co-author Manolis Kellis, the Karl R. Van Tassel (1925) Career Development Associate Professor of Computer Science at MIT. “This new map reveals almost 3 million previously undetectable elements in non-coding regions that have been carefully preserved across all mammals, and whose disruptions appear to be associated with human disease.”

A Treasure Trove

In their own words, “This new map helps pinpoint mutations that are likely responsible for disease — generally in genes that have been preserved across millions of years of evolution. Knowing the causal mutations and their likely functions can then help uncover the underlying disease mechanisms and reveal potential drug targets.

The scientists were able to suggest possible functions for more than half of the 360 million DNA letters contained in the conserved elements, revealing:

• almost 4,000 previously undetected exons, or segments of DNA that code for proteins;
• 10,000 highly conserved elements that may be involved in protein production;
• more than 1,000 new families of RNA secondary structures with diverse roles in gene regulation; and
• 2.7 million predicted targets of transcription factors, proteins that control gene expression.”

There are three and probably many more disturbing insights with this project:

• The emphasis on regulation being the key.  Anyone engaged in activism understands the duality of words and semantic word games
• The emerging filed of synthetic DNA.  At what point do we loose being human and the human soul?
• And one very articulate comment posted at the end of the article:

Time will tell if humanity is on the eve of destruction as scientists, regulators, and government “play god” with their experimentation and manipulation across the fields of sciences adulterating all that was pure and good from the Creator.

From the trenches of liberty,

Celeste