Dr. Ovcharenko and his group are deciphering the “second language” of the human genome. The vast landscape of the human genome hosts elements that orchestrate the dynamics of proteins in every human cell, establishes cell identity, and safeguards the defense mechanisms. These elements, known as gene regulatory elements, are encrypted in a different genomic language known as the second language of genomes. As this second language of genomes remains largely unknown, we are working on developing novel artificial intelligence methods to understand the genomic encryption of gene regulatory elements and use it to map the location of these elements in the human genome.
https://www.nlm.nih.gov/research/researchstaff/OvcharenkoIvan.html
Transcript:
[Upbeat Music]
My lab at NLM is studying the non-coding part of the human genome. When the human genome was sequenced in 2001, what we learned is that only 2% of the sequence of our genome is used for coding genes. That in turn translate into proteins.
This is the sequence information that's being used by every single cell.
But it only represents 2% of our genome. 98% of our DNA is not being used.
There were some speculation suggesting that
it could be that that large chunk of our genome is purely junk and, in reality, that’s not true. There are treasure islands, within the sea of non-coding DNA in the human genome, that are critically important for regulating the genes. These are the pieces that we can refer to as light switches.
What we’ve learned, is 95% of disease associations,
they hide within these non-coding part of our genomes.
And what my lab is trying to do is look
through these vast landscapes of the human genome
and identify where these light switches are hiding and to figure out what exactly do they do.
Which genes do they turn on,
when do they turn these genes on,
and what happens if they don’t turn these genes on? So, if we want to understand
how we can address human diseases and disorders,
we have to study and to understand the non-coded part of our genomes.
I still cannot comprehend how we can conquer space, have self-driving cars, and do not understand the encryption of the human genome. I am really interested in trying to get to this hidden second code of our genomes
by the end of my scientific career.
[Music reaches a crescendo, then fades out]
[Silence]