DNA topology and genome organization in higher eukaryotes: a model.
Résumé
The complexity of higher organisms, which arises in the course of embryonic development from the much simpler fertilized egg, does not emerge by spontaneous generation nor by miracle. Such complexity must somehow be preexistent in the egg. Since the structure of organisms is genetically transmitted, it is DNA itself, the support of genetic information, that encodes this complexity. Here we propose a model of organization of the genome in DNA loops maintained by DNA crossings. In this model DNA sequences that do not encode proteins, which represent more than 98% of the human genome, are involved in the definition of DNA crossing points and can no longer be considered as junk, but instead play a fundamental part in the encoding of genetic information by modulating the transcriptional state of genome domains.
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