Reddit "Ask Me Anything" Recap: The ENCODE Project - National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI)

Reddit "Ask Me Anything" Recap: The ENCODE Project - National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI)

Reddit "Ask Me Anything" Recap: The ENCODE Project

By Sheena Faherty
Science Writer, NHGRI

Mike Pazin, Dan Gilchrist and Elise Feingold participate in Reddit "Ask Me Anything!" on February 9, 2017. Credit: Ernesto Del Aguila III, NHGRI.

The National Human Genome Research Institute's ENCyclopedia Of DNA Elements (ENCODE) Project has spent 13 years building a catalog of all the functional elements in the human genome sequence, and making it available to scientists worldwide for the study of human health and disease.

On February 9, 2017, to highlight the announcement of new funding awards, ENCODE program directors in the Division of Genome Sciences at NHGRI, Drs. Elise Feingold, Mike Pazin, and Dan Gilchrist, and ENCODE researchers from the University of California, San Francisco, Drs. Nadav Ahituv and Yin Shen, turned to Reddit -  a social news website and discussion forum - to answer questions from the Reddit community. Here, we recap the event (or you can check out Reddit Science's page to see the whole "Ask Me Anything!")

Overall, the team answered over fifty questions related to the future of genomics, the ENCODE Project, and "dark matter" DNA, among others. For example, the ENCODE team gave their thoughts about how DNA sequencing is a powerful way to answer numerous biological questions.

Check out a few of the questions and answers below, or vist the Reddit AMA on the ENCODE Project, and stay tuned for more NHGRI AMAs in the future.