Re:The Complex Truth About ‘Junk DNA’
by f6v on Wednesday September 01, 2021 @01:45PM
(#28383181)
The fact that enhancers can be transcribed is quite interesting. I’m not sure what’s the function of these transcripts though. It seems like the transcription is terminated prematurely once RNA pol realizes it’s not a functional gene.
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Re:The Complex Truth About ‘Junk DNA’
by nextos on Wednesday September 01, 2021 @01:55PM
(#28383326)
There's a lot of literature on this, but you are quite right as there are tons of open questions. Some enhancer RNAs are non-functional. Others seem to help stabilizing chromosome contacts. Some do seem to encode secondary structures, so they are probably functional ncRNAs.
Irrespective of this, enhancer RNA transcription is very useful to track active regulatory regions and to perform QTL studies.