The study carried out by researchers from the Hospital Clínic-IDIBAPS has provided a high-resolution map of the functions of the genome.
Researchers at Hospital Clínic-IDIBAPS have deciphered how the complete genome of chronic lymphatic leukemia works , the most frequent type of leukemia, which opens the door to developing new treatments against this cancer.
The study, published today by the journal Nature Medicine and coordinated by the head of the IDIBAPS Biomedical Epigenomics group and professor at the University of Barcelona, Iñaki Martín-Subero , has provided a high-resolution map of the functions of the genome and It is a new approach to molecular cancer research.
According to Martín-Subero, the comparison of the map of leukemia with the map of healthy cells has revealed hundreds of regions that change their functionality in leukemia, which helps to better understand the disease and develop new therapies.
So far, molecular studies of leukemia, and other types of cancer, had focused on analyzing molecules with only one layer of information, which provided a partial view and did not allow drawing an accurate map of the functions of the genome.
Researchers have been able to pinpoint regions with specific functions, such as the dark areas of the genome, known as 'junk DNA' , but which actually contain a multitude of regions essential for the genome to work.
" In a similar way to a geographical map, where towns, mountains or rivers are represented, " Martín-Subero explained, "we were able to map for the first time the complete map of the functions of the leukemia genome, defining active genes, inactive genes, regions that do not contain genes but control their expression or inactive large genome deserts. "
"In total," he said, "we have identified that the genome map contains a total of 12 different functions ."