[work] Good science news: something showed up in my data that made my whole lab excited

The tl;dr :I'm investigating how DNA structure interacts with genetic variation to affect how genes are utilized.

Nobody's characterized this before so it's all novel, and I've thoroughly described how these interactions take place within great big loops of DNA called Topologically Associating Domains, to the point where my interaction data can actually show you where TADs (approximately) are based on where interactions happen.

This past week I found out that there's a subset of open, loosely-coiled DNA involved in these interactions that seems to be negatively correlated with gene utilization, which is the opposite of what you'd assume: usually open DNA makes genes get used more.

So I looked into what sequences are found at those locations, and my mentor recognized that one of the top results was... a DNA motif found at TAD boundaries.

So what we think is happening is that there might be genetic variation in our samples at these TAD boundary sites which changes whether they're used or not, which then totally alters and often lowers the expression of genes nearby.

This is something we wouldn't have been able to figure out if we'd just been looking at the genetic variation, or just at the DNA structure. It's only when you look at the two together to you zero in on these sites.

And for other researchers, the two kinds of data we're using are relatively easy to generate, so we're giving a framework for 1. figuring out where to look for meaningful interactions between bits of DNA 2. explaining some weird but very significant results you might potentially see

WingsOfCover

So yeah this is hella cool and I am so glad my mentor spotted the TAD boundary motif

nice

DNA is so strange