Physicists Confirm DNA Has Second Layer Of Hidden Information

For the first time ever, a team of physicists from the Leiden Institute of Physics, Netherlands, have reached a conclusion that DNA has a second layer of information. They have demonstrated via simulations how hidden information in the DNA controls human being's evolution in their study published in journal PLoS One.

During their research, the physicists have found that DNA mechanics, in addition to the genetic information coded in the DNA, makes who we are. Helmut Schiessel and his research team simulated many DNA sequences and found that there is a correlation between mechanical cues and folding up of the DNA.

It has long been hypothesized that there is a second layer of information on top of the genetic code that consists of DNA mechanical properties that determine how that information folds up inside cells.

Members of the research team were able to confirm that the mechanical cues are coded into the DNA. They simulated the genomes of both baker's yeast and fission yeast and then randomly assigned them a second level of DNA information, complete with mechanical cues.

It was found that the cues determined which proteins were expressed and how the DNA molecule was folded into so-called nucleosomes.

The physicists were also able to prove that there's more than one way that DNA mutations affect us, by changing the letters (G, A T and C) in our DNA, as well as by changing the mechanical cues that arrange the way a strand is folded.

"With this finding we know that evolutionary changes in DNA-mutations-can have two very different effects: the letter sequence encoding for a specific protein can change or the mechanics of the DNA structure can change, resulting in a different packaging and accessibility of the DNA and therefore a different frequency of production of that protein," the research team noted in an official statement.