Google Releases AlphaGenome Atlas to Test Every Single-Base Change in the Human Genome

The scale of the undertaking follows from the size of the genome. The human genome is about 3 billion bases long, so testing the three other DNA bases that do not appear in the reference genome at each position means sending a total of 9 billion bases through the AlphaGenome software.

AlphaGenome is designed to identify the potential functions of non-coding DNA, which does not encode proteins but makes up the vast majority of the human genome. Some of that non-coding DNA is essential for controlling the activity of the protein-coding portion: it tells the cell where and when to make messenger RNAs and how to process them into mature protein-coding forms. Much of the rest, however, appears to be little more than the remains of viruses and other molecular parasites.

Being able to identify the functional portion of the non-coding genome is useful, and so is having all of that analysis done by a single software package, Ars Technica reported. But until biologists start to use the resource heavily, it will not be clear what AlphaGenome offers beyond what could have been obtained from its training data.