Biology

Question

Dear Sir. I am interested in research on "The role of intergenic spacer regions in genetics",and I have to present a paper about that. I would appreciate if you guide me and send me some information and pictures and papers about this subject. Thank you very much.

Answer

Dear Allison, Thank you for sending your question to AskNSDL. This is a very interesting topic! I'm a librarian and can point you to some resources that may help you with your report. The Human Genome Project is a good place to start. It provides links to many images, publications, fact sheets, etc. http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/home.shtml In the above-mentioned website, there is a section called Human Genome Information. Here, I found an article that contains a short explanation of "the role of intergenic spacer regions in genetics": "Genes comprise only about 2% of the human genome; the remainder consists of noncoding regions, whose functions may include providing chromosomal structural integrity and regulating where, when, and in what quantity proteins are made. " "From the Genome to the Proteome" http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/project/info.shtml The Human Genome Project also provides links to images under Educational Resources and a section of links to publications. For journal articles of a more advanced nature, you can search PubMed,http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/, a database of peer-reviewed journal articles in medicine and the biological/life sciences. Hopefully, you can get access to the full text versions of these articles through your school or a local university if they look interesting to you. In searching PubMed, I used the following strategy: Search "DNA, Intergenic"[MAJR:NoExp] Limits: Publication Date from 1994/10/28 to 2004/10/28, Review If you want to try the search yourself, just copy and paste "DNA, Intergenic"[MAJR:NoExp] in the search box, click on "Limits," select "Review" articles in "Publication Types" and type in the dates that interest you. Here are 2 results from that search and links to their abstracts. 1: Shabalina SA, Spiridonov NA. The mammalian transcriptome and the function of non-coding DNA sequences. Genome Biol. 2004;5(4):105. Epub 2004 Mar 25. Review. PMID: 15059247 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=15059247 2: Ludwig MZ. Functional evolution of noncoding DNA. Curr Opin Genet Dev. 2002 Dec;12(6):634-9. Review. PMID: 12433575 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&do pt=Abstract&list_uids=12433575 If you cannot access the full text of the above articles, try the open access articles that are available through PubMed Central. Search on "intergenic DNA". http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/ I also searched the National Science Digital Library,http://nsdl.org, for the key phrase, "intergenic dna". Here's one result: "The regulatory content of intergenic DNA shapes genome architecture" by Carroll, Sean B, Hersh, Bradley M, and Nelson, Craig E. at BioMedCentral,http://www.biomedcentral.com/. Check out the references in this article for further research and sources of information on your topic. In the full text version of this article, the links in the references are live. Abstract:http://genomebiology.com/2004/5/4/R25 Complete Full text article:http://genomebiology.com/2004/5/4/R25 For images, I tried Google images and searched on "intergenic dna". Try the search yourself and see if any of the images are useful for your paper. http://www.google.com/imghp?hl=en&tab=wi&q= Well, Allison, I hope this information has been helpful to you. Be sure to check with the librarian at your school and/or public library for more help with finding resources in print and for help searching the databases to which they subscribe. Good luck and good night! Sincerely, Joyce W.