DNA finding has implications for MPNs

The group intends to find out. They also want to search for additional variants that control replication timing.

“These 16 variants are almost certainly just the tip of the iceberg,” Dr Koren said.

He and his colleagues believe that, as more variants come to light in future studies, researchers should be better able to manipulate replication timing in the lab and learn more about how it works and its biological significance.

“All you need to do to study replication timing is grow cells and sequence their DNA, which everyone is doing these days,” Dr Koren said. “[This new method] is much easier, faster, and cheaper, and I think it will transform the field because we can now do experiments in large scale.”

“We found that there is biological information in genome sequence data,” Dr McCarroll added. “But this was still an accidental biological experiment. Now imagine the results when we and others actually design experiments to study this phenomenon.”