Mumtaz Ahmad Ansari
The biggest leap in the age of bio-informatics has been the advent of next generation sequencing. Its latest discovery, the presence of non-coding RNA (ncRNA), was one of the least explored domains of human genome in the start of the century. Though it is believed to constitute more than 50–70% of the human genome, without being able to assess its potential role in human evolution; it was considered the dark matter by some and junk DNA by others [1].
Though evident way back much earlier, that the divergent protein sequences required for the so-called chimp to human evolution could not be explained by the highly conserved protein sequences [2]. Britten and Davidson in 1971 were the first to perpetuate the idea that RNA might interact with genomic DNA leading to the specific molecular profile of each cell [3]. But the idea remained neglected for next two decades until Brannan et al., finally proved the existence of genomic activities of non-coding RNA’s [4].
