We have mysterious stuff in our chromosomes, and it’s definitely not DNA
While dark matter might explain mystery mass in space, there is unknown matter right here on Earth—and it’s in our chromosomes.
Human chromosomes have now been found to be 20 times heavier than the DNA in them. Whatever is behind this extra weight could explain things which might reveal genetic mutations and anomalies that cause congenital diseases and damage to DNA that turns cells cancerous when they can no longer heal themselves. This is much more than the research team who discovered this, including physicist Ian Robinson of University College in London, ever imagined.
“It could be additional DNA not in the genome sequence, like satellite DNA. It could be a lot more proteins than those we know about,” Robinson told SYFY WIRE in an interview. “It could also be boring things like salt and water, but unlikely this much.”
What Robinson, who coauthored a study recently published in Chromosome Research, and his team have found out could be eventually contribute to the Human Genome Project, which revealed the mass of DNA molecules inside chromosomes. What had still not been resolved was the weight of the chromosomes themselves, which are so incredibly complex that many things about them continue to elude us. So how do you weigh something microscopic, with an equally microscopic weight, and get an idea of its total mass? X-rays.
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