Friday, March 18, 2011

How many percentages?

I recently found out a very interesting aspect of other percentage of our human genomes which has 3 billion base pairs. Looking through literatures, though I cannot safely say which percentage of our genome is functioning to the best of our knowledge, it is well known that only 2 to 3 % of our 3 billion base pairs encode functional genes. What the other percentage of 97 to 98% represents is still unknown.

Even from those 2 - 3 % established regions which encodes genes, functions of certain genes are still unknown. Some are established as in p53, tumor suppressor proteins, or VEGF, FGF, IDH, and so on. We are still figuring out the functions of unpopular genes.

As our knowledge on biochemical pathways increased incrementally over the years, it becomes difficult to pin point a very specific function of a particular gene in the first place without going through a vast arrays of molecular techniques. Mendel's earlier observation of phenotypes of his experiments on peas would have been much simpler comparing to nowadays technological advancement and state-of-the-art molecular technique.

I'm rambling and typing whatever comes into my mind. Coming back to our topic, the other percentage of our genome? What are they doing? I have some idea. Since it is not yet been formally tested, I cannot divulge what I have been toying with my idea. But I do have some idea though.

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