IBM unlocks mysterious DNA Using Artificial Intelligence
Have you heard about Dark Matter? It makes up an astonishing 85% of the matter in the universe. They are made up of some yet to be discovered atomic particles.
But how about Dark Matter DNA? These unexplored molecules and matter surrounding our genes make up more than half of the human genome. But the scientists are unaware of its functions and most importantly its effect on the human body.
Scientists at IBM and the Munich Leukemia Laboratory have used some groundbreaking A.I. algorithms to unravel the functions of these mysterious DNA.
Laxmi Parida, IBM Research Fellow in Computational Genomics, said that despite it making up a large portion of our genome, the dark matter DNA had been ignored. Most scientists believe it plays no role.
IBM unlocks mysterious DNA- The Idea Behind The Research
The scientists designed what they refer to as a “stochastic regularization A.I. model” that was built explicitly for DNA data. They termed this system as ReVeal. Using this the team was able to train algorithms on data from patients’ blood samples; allowing the A.I. to learn from and separate specific signals from the dark matter, as well as
the rest of the DNA.Pardia explained that using ReVeal, the scientists at IBM could achieve a 75% accuracy rate in identifying blood cancers just by looking at the DNA or dark matter DNA alone in a patients’ blood sample.
From these findings, the researchers suggest that dark matter DNA plays a much more significant role than previously thought in influencing the phenotype of cells and tissues.
This suggests that dark matter DNA, far from being an inconsequential research footnote, may have a much higher role to play in our genome than people realized. The results also show that DNA alone contains enough signals to classify blood cancers accurately. This lays the groundwork for further analysis into how blood tests could be used to diagnose these complex diseases.
Parida added that the scientists hope that this research leads to more breakthroughs into how dark matter DNA influences the human genome. Researchers at IBM believe that dark matter DNA can give them a better understanding of genetics and complex disease.
