It's not often that new discoveries change the basic science we learned in middle/high school... amazing start to deeper understanding of ourselves....

"Google Maps for DNA" is an incredibly powerful concept:

As scientists delved into the “junk” — parts of the DNA that are not actual genes containing instructions for proteins — they discovered a complex system that controls genes. At least 80 percent of this DNA is active and needed. The result of the work is an annotated road map of much of this DNA, noting what it is doing and how. It includes the system of switches that, acting like dimmer switches for lights, control which genes are used in a cell and when they are used, and determine, for instance, whether a cell becomes a liver cell or a neuron.

Thank you for sharing this, Aimee.

An amazing breakthrough!

I'm reading the 6 Nature articles on this now: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v489/n7414/full/489045a.html

A friend Alex Khomenko says there's a lot of PR hype in this discovery, and he says there's still a lot more work to be done.

Read more: http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=1167