A GENE that regulates our blood pressure has revealed one of the secrets of “junk” DNA.
Most genes include both “exons”, the chunks of DNA that carry the instructions for making proteins, and stretches of DNA called “introns” with no obvious purpose. Before proteins are made, the introns are eliminated and the exons spliced together.
Now a German team has shown that repeating stretches of DNA in the introns from the gene for an enzyme called nitric oxide synthase are vital for splicing. “We think it’s where a protein docks to help eliminate the intron,” says Albrecht Bindereif, head of…
