We can’t remove the DNA part, can’t we?
In: Biology
DNA is read in 3 letter chunks called “Codons” most of these represent specific amino acids that will be used to build proteins. However, There are a couple special “Start Codons” that tell your cells “Hey, this is the start of a gene, start reading here.” Correspondingly, there are also “Stop Codons” that tell your cells where the end of a gene is.
So, scientists can scan through DNA looking for start and stop codons and assume that anything in between those must be part of a gene.
Now, it turns out that a large majority of DNA isn’t a part of any gene, but that’s not to say that it doesn’t do *anything*. It can contain regions that make certain genes more or less likely to be read, it can be structural, helping the DNA coil correctly to fit into the cell, or it can help stabilize other cellular machinery. Furthermore, having a certain amount of “extra” DNA around is good for evolution, because a mutation in an important gene might kill you, whereas a mutation in a section of DNA that’s not being used will probably have no effect. But, if some of that unused DNA gradually turns into something useful, you can create new genes without breaking old ones.
I’m no DNA specialist, but we can compare between healthy individuals and unhealthy individuals and see where the genes are different. Eventually you’d be able to locate the genes that are responsible for each disease.
Then we can compare genes between healthy people that have different traits.
You can absolutely remove parts of DNA in animals. Gene knock outs or knock ins are common genetic manipulations. You can basically add or delete any gene you want from lab animals and see how the function changes. Of course some of these genes are essential for life and knocking them out would not produce a viable subject.
As mentioned elsewhere, GWAS is commonly used now that we have sequenced the human genome and can look for genetic difference among groups of people.
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