Scientists find surprising impact of junk DNA and RNA in cancer

"Human satellite II," an exceptionally high-copy but unexplored sequence of the human genome thought of as "junk DNA," has a surprising ability to impact master regulators of our genome, and it goes awry in 50 percent of tumors, according to a new study published in Cell Reports by scientists at UMass Medical School. When deregulated, these large expanses of repeated nucleotide sequences bind and sequester master regulatory proteins into large nuclear bodies in cancer cells. This likely contributes to epigenetic instability—changes in gene regulation—that are a driving force in the progression of many cancers.