{"id":227814,"date":"2025-12-25T09:09:59","date_gmt":"2025-12-25T15:09:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/12\/hidden-switches-in-dna-reveal-new-insights-into-alzheimers-disease"},"modified":"2025-12-25T09:09:59","modified_gmt":"2025-12-25T15:09:59","slug":"hidden-switches-in-dna-reveal-new-insights-into-alzheimers-disease","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/12\/hidden-switches-in-dna-reveal-new-insights-into-alzheimers-disease","title":{"rendered":"Hidden \u2018switches\u2019 in DNA reveal new insights into Alzheimer\u2019s disease"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/hidden-switches-in-dna-reveal-new-insights-into-alzheimers-disease.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A tiny percentage of our DNA\u2014around 2%\u2014contains 20,000-odd genes. The remaining 98%\u2014long known as the non-coding genome, or so-called \u2018junk\u2019 DNA\u2014includes many of the \u201cswitches\u201d that control when and how strongly genes are expressed.<\/p>\n<p>Now researchers from UNSW Sydney have identified the DNA switches that help control how astrocytes work\u2014these are brain cells that support neurons, and are known to play a role in Alzheimer\u2019s disease.<\/p>\n<p>In research published in <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1038\/s41593-025-02154-3\" target=\"_blank\"><i>Nature Neuroscience<\/i><\/a>, researchers from UNSW\u2019s School of Biotechnology &amp; Biomolecular Sciences described how they tested nearly 1,000 potential switches\u2014strings of DNA known as enhancers\u2014in human astrocytes grown in the lab. Enhancers can be located very far away from the gene they control, sometimes hundreds of thousands of DNA letters away\u2014making them difficult to study.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A tiny percentage of our DNA\u2014around 2%\u2014contains 20,000-odd genes. The remaining 98%\u2014long known as the non-coding genome, or so-called \u2018junk\u2019 DNA\u2014includes many of the \u201cswitches\u201d that control when and how strongly genes are expressed. Now researchers from UNSW Sydney have identified the DNA switches that help control how astrocytes work\u2014these are brain cells that support [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-227814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227814"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227814\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}