1/5 human genome is a fake gene

According to Nucleic Acids Research magazine, in the human genome, the amount of encrypted information may be less than 20% of the previous rating. In a new study, an international team of scientists demonstrated that only 80% of the genes in human DNA actually encode a certain protein and the remaining 20% ​​lost this ability.

In the human genome, there are 23 pairs of chromosomes, and in the chromosomes there are about 28,000 genes. However, not all of them carry genetic information, necessary for protein synthesis. Some genes perform several types of auxiliary functions, while others do nothing.

One-fifth of the human genome is a fake gene, meaning they don't encode any protein - (Photo: Flickr)

These gene segments are called pseudogene - they develop from normal genes, but during evolution and many mutations, they lose the ability to encode proteins. A group of Spanish, British and American scientists have discovered that one-fifth of human genes are counterfeit genes that do not function.

The authors compared databases from three different genome research projects: GENCODE / Ensembl, RefSeq and UniProtKB. In total, scientists found 22,210 genes that carry information about a certain protein. But only 19,446 of them are available in all three databases. Later, the researchers began analyzing the remaining 2,764 genes and found that almost all of them were fake genes, meaning they did not encode any protein. Moreover, this number also has an additional 1,470 genes, each mentioned in all three databases.

In total, scientists found 4,234 fake genes. This information has been added to the international project database GENCODE. Now, scientists will have to verify this data by thoroughly studying each of the detected fake genes.