Junk DNA sculpts faces of mice

摘要

Even the prettiest faces are built using junk. In mice, the shapes of the face and skull are finely tuned by "junk DNA", so called because it was thought to lack function. The same junk DNA is found in humans and may do a similar job. Geneticists have found only a few genes that control face shape. So Axel Visel of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California focused on "enhancers": short sequences of DNA - which are still sometimes called "junk" - that do not code for genes but can influence their activity.