Illuminating Dark Matter in Human DNA; In Unprecedented Atlas of Accessible Chromatin Regions, Researchers Begin to Map How Genes Are Turned On or Off In Different Cells, A Step Toward Better Understanding Connections Between Genetics and Disease

Researchers at the University of California San Diego (UC San Diego) have produced a single-cell chromatin atlas for the human genome. Chromatin is a complex of DNA and protein found in eukaryotic cells; regions of chromatin at key gene regulatory elements appear in open configurations within certain cell nuclei. Precisely delineating these accessible chromatin regions in cells of different human tissue types would be a major step toward understanding the role of gene regulatory elements (non-coding DNA) in human health or disease. The findings were published online on November 12, 2021 in Cell. The open-access article is titled “A Single-Cell Atlas of Chromatin Accessibility in the Human Genome.”