Artificial Intelligence cracks code of gene regulation

Organisms are built from thousands of different proteins, each of them encoded by a specific gene. For a cell type to acquire its unique identity, form, and function, it must activate genes through the expression of "enhancers". Scientists have long tried to crack the code by which enhancers operate. The labs of Alexander Stark at the IMP and Eileen Furlong at EMBL Heidelberg now harnessed genomics and artificial intelligence to solve this second "code of life". Their findings were published in the journal Nature.