New Gene-silencing Pathway Found In Plants

Biologists have made major headway in explaining a mechanism by which plant cells silence potentially harmful genes. New research in Cell explains how RNA polymerases work together to use the non-coding region of DNA to prevent destructive, virus-derived genes from being activated. This research adds to a growing body of evidence suggesting that "junk DNA" is in fact a functional part of the genome, since transcription of the intergenic regions is necessary to keep potentially harmful genes turned off.

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