I’ve been watching some videos about DNA and came across a DNA sequence with a bunch of letters for a virus. How do scientists read them or make sense of them? Can they tell what a virus/or DNA will do or how it will work, just from the sequence?
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Most of the time, we use DNA in comparison to other sequences. It’s less about translating it like it’s a different language and more about seeing if the DNA is similar to a sequence you already know. So you have to have some prior knowledge to compare the DNA to, which is why the human genome project was so important. Now we can compare and contrast DNA to see what’s different in someone with a disease and that will help point us towards the protein it was supposed to make etc etc.
However, because we have a LOT of data about DNA, we can make really good predictions by comparing and contrasting that DNA. Sometimes we can look at a virus’s genetic information and know that it will be resistant to a certain drug. Sometimes we just don’t have enough context clues to make an assumption like that.
There is a lot of DNA that is “structural”, so it serves as (important!) space between genes. A gene is a segment of DNA that is destined to become a protein. Structural DNA never gets translated into proteins. Because the structural DNA isn’t distinguishable from DNA that is part of genes, we can’t really “predict” how a set of DNA will work from just the letters. (This is also similar to exon/introns if you’ve heard those words. Not quite the same thing but kind of the same idea.)
Also, when a gene gets translated into a protein, there are “chaperone proteins” around it that help it form it’s correct shape. These are complicated and unique interactions. Each one of those interactions has to be studied on each individual protein because it’s different from protein to protein. Sometimes we can do that but a lot of times it’s hard to convince someone to fund your research just because you’re curious.
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