Genetic Variation in Individual Brain Cell Types May Predict Disease Risk

Newswise — One might think that the primary cause of most genetically linked diseases comes from mutations in coding DNA — alterations in coding regions of the genome that can lead directly to changes in the expression of particular proteins important for a healthy body. But the majority of human DNA is non-coding DNA — regions of DNA that do not directly translate into functional proteins. These non-coding DNA regions contain functional elements, called enhancers, which can change the likelihood of a particular protein to be made.

Researchers are now finding particular genetic variations in some of these non-coding regulatory regions, called enhancers, determine whether or not proteins are expressed in specific cell types in…