On Jul. 29, 2020, the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) Project is a worldwide effort to understand how the human genome functions’switches’ from the human and mouse genomes that appear to regulate when and where genes are turned on, and a new registry that assigns a portion of these DNA switches to useful biological categories. The project also offers new visualization tools to assist in the use of ENCODE’s large datasets.

The human body is composed of trillions of cells, with thousands of types of cells. While all these cells share a common set of DNA instructions, the diverse cell types (e.g., heart, lung and brain) carry out distinct functions by using the information encoded in DNA differently. The DNA regions that act as switches to turn genes on or off, or tune the exact levels of gene activity, help drive the formation of distinct cell types in the body and govern their functioning in health and disease.

The project’s latest results were published in Nature, accompanied by 13 additional in-depth studies published in other major journals.