Distal regulation — the ability to control genes from far away, over many tens of thousands of DNA letters — appeared at the very dawn of animal evolution, between 650 and 700 million years ago (Cryogenian period) — around 150 million years earlier than previously thought. Illustration of a DNA molecule. Image credit: Christoph Bock, Max Planck Institute for Informatics / CC BY-SA 3.0. Distal regulation relies on physically folding...
