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Browsing the genome

Can it be right that only a small fraction of these genes is coding? To confirm our results, let’s look up on the UCSC genome browser:

  1. Visit https://genome.ucsc.edu and click ‘Genome Browser’ (choose the Euro mirror)

  2. In ‘Position/Search Term’ type the gene name - say FUT2. (Make sure the 'Human Assembly' is set to GRCh38/hg38 in the dropdown above). This may give you a list of genes - if so click on the one with the right name.

  3. You'll see the gene in its location on the genome. Try zooming out a little to see the gene in its context. It should look something like this:

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Sure enough, most of the gene is in introns.

You can click on the gene to read more information about it. Repeat this for the other genes you looked up e.g. HBA1 - did you get it right?

Note

As you can probably see, the genome browser contains an incredible wealth of information about the human genome, with data representing many thousands of experiments done by researchers worldwide. Feel free to explore the browser to see what you can glean from the data presented - try clicking on things for more information. (But watch out - it can be a bit overwhelming at first!)

For example, the bottom track in the image above shows common genetic variants - some of them are coloured. You can click on them for more information. Can you find a SNP that encodes a change to the protein?