Chinese scientists progress in decoding human genome

A team from Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), led by Liu Jiang, work at the laboratory. [Photo: cri.cn]

A group of Chinese scientists have made new progress in decoding the programming language of the human genome.

The team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences has discovered what they say is an important mechanism in human evolution. 

"There is a DNA fragment in the human genome sequence called a Transposon. It usually moves from one section of the sequence to another, which triggers a DNA mutation. And mutations that take place in embryos are more inheritable and will contribute to human evolvement," said Liu Jiang, the leader of the research team.

Liu Jiang, researcher of Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. [Photo: cri.cn]

He added that the findings are expected to help improve the quality of reproduction technology.

The achievement is part of the latest results of the team's study on gene expression.

Their results have been published in the latest edition of scientific journal Cell.