For the first time, researchers have decoded the genetic programmes that control the development of major organs in humans and other selected mammals—rhesus monkeys, mice, rats, rabbits and opossums—before and after birth. Using next-generation sequencing technologies, the molecular biologists at Heidelberg University analysed the brain, heart, liver, kidney, testicles, and ovaries. Their large-scale study demonstrated, among other things, that all the organs studied exhibit fundamental and original gene activity networks that must have originated early on in mammalian evolution more than 200 million years ago. In a second large study, the scientists explored for the first time the developmental roles of a hitherto poorly understood but large category of genes, so-called RNA genes, which produce ribonucleic acids and not proteins, like “normal” genes.
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Source: Phys.org