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Science Magazine's Highlight Of 2002
gingerTabs writes "BBC News is reporting that the 2002 Science Magazine highlight of 2002 is the discovery of the small RNA molecule. Whould've thunk it, eh?"
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With the FORBES greatest breakthroughs of the last century and this, it seems like innovation and discovery is happening much more in the area of biology than anywhere else. I mean, the most notable discoveries according to FORBES in the last 20 years were mostly drugs.
No, it was first discovered in 1993. But back then it was considered as anomaly. Now, the scientists figured out about what it is.
Here's a more detailed info.
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You're thinking of tRNAs - transfer RNAs, which are in the 70-100 nucleotide range. Small RNAs are generally below this - right down to a dozen or so nucleotides or less in some cases. I work in a lab that does a fair bit of small RNA work, and the tRNAs are right up at the top of all our gels as the "big" RNAs in the population.
Read the article will ya:
They don't say they discovered RNA, they say they found out that RNA does something we didn't know it did.
You can't take the sky from me...
Researchers at Oregon State University have made an important advance in the understanding of "micro-RNA" molecules, which are tiny bits of genetic material that were literally unknown 10 years ago but now represent one of the most exciting new fields of study in biology.
The findings will be reported Friday in the journal Science.
They reveal for the first time a new mechanism by which micro-RNA can stop the function of messenger-RNA by literally cutting it in half, interfering with the normal function of specific messenger RNAs in gene expression.
This "expression" of genes that code for essential proteins is ultimately what controls whether a cell turns into a lung, liver, brain or other cell. Understanding what activates this process - or stops it - is a key to understanding the biological process of life itself, and forms the foundation for advances in medicine, agriculture and other fields.
On this frontier of biology, experts say, the most intriguing new component is micro-RNA, a minuscule type of regulatory molecule that had seemed insignificant even in the extraordinarily tiny, microscopic world of cell biology.
The first micro-RNA, in fact, was only discovered in 1993 and at the time was thought to be a biological oddity in worms. A couple hundred have since been discovered in both plants and animals. But it has only been in just the past few months that scientists working in this area have come to understand the potentially profound importance of micro-RNA.
"For a long time, people really did not know that these micro-RNAs were even there," said James Carrington, a professor and director of the OSU Center for Gene Research and Biotechnology. "They were under the radar, and observations of them were limited by our technology. But as we learn more about these regulatory molecules, we're beginning to understand the scope of their biological importance. In molecular biology, micro-RNAs are clearly one of the top two or three discoveries of the past decade."
Every normal cell in complex organisms, such as plants, flies and humans, has a complete copy of the DNA for the entire organism, some 15,000 to 35,000 genes that collectively are thought of as the genetic blueprint for life. But to serve as certain types of cells, such as brain in humans or roots in plants, only a much smaller number of genes within each cell are actually "expressed," or allowed to create the proteins that perform these separate life functions.
"A key focus in biology for a long time has been what controls gene expression," Carrington said.
It is well understood, Carrington said, that two of the key steps between DNA and a functional cell are the processes of transcription and translation. In transcription, single-stranded "messenger RNA" molecules that correspond to each expressed gene are produced. And in translation, the messenger RNA is decoded, resulting in the production of a protein made from some combination of 20 amino acids.
"This is a very complex series of biological processes that requires hundreds of proteins and other factors," Carrington said. "And we're now also learning the role of micro-RNA in controlling expression of some important genes."
Micro-RNAs are actually produced by the transcription of tiny genes, in regions of the genome that were previously thought to be vacant or useless DNA. However, unlike messenger RNAs, micro-RNAs are not translated to produce proteins. Instead, researchers are finding that these micro-RNAs have critical functions in controlling the process of gene expression.
In some recent studies, other scientists found that micro-RNAs can bind to specific messenger RNAs to block the translation or decoding process. In the latest advance made by the OSU researchers, micro-RNAs in the plant Arabidopsis thaliana were found to destroy messenger RNAs instead of blocking its function, by literally cutting it in half.
"Much of our understanding of cell biology is related to this area we call negative regulation, or the processes that stops genes from being expressed," Carrington said. "Anything that improves our knowledge of this process could be quite significant."
For one thing, Carrington said, micro-RNAs might be intimately involved in the normal function of stem cells, those biologically unique cells that, when reproducing, can produce either more stem cells or begin a line of cells that is differentiated into something else, a brain, lung or liver cell.
"It's very important that we learn how cells differentiate and grow normally," Carrington said. "Just about everything in the human body has a genetic component. Genetic abnormalities relate to birth and developmental defects, susceptibility to disease, misregulation of genes. And these same processes are also at work in all other life forms, including plants, and new findings could be applied to crop biotechnology or even traditional plant breeding."
Continued research, Carrington said, will almost undoubtedly find human genetic defects that can be traced to dysfunction of micro-RNAs.
This broad area of research, officials say, has such promise that major new studies are being developed across the nation.
OSU was recently the recipient of a four-year, $1.7 million grant from the National Science Foundation to study micro-RNAs in Arabidopsis, a plant that works well as a model for genetic research, and the researchers will try to identify the functional messenger RNA targets of different micro-RNAs.
Scientists expect that some of the life processes controlled by micro-RNAs in plants will have been conserved across millions of years of evolution and operate the same way in animals, including humans.
Until recently, RNA was thought to do little more than carry out DNA's instructions for building proteins.
However, the new picture, which Science says came into focus this year, shows small RNAs at the heart of many of the cell's genetic workings.
This is an oversimplification, probably intended for a lay audience. For the past 20 years or so, RNA has been known to have enzymatic functions. At first this catalytic property of RNA had been thought to be limited to primitive organisms. However, recent research has shown that rRNA, which is the RNA component of ribosomes, is in fact the catalytic component of the peptidyltransferase reaction that creates polypeptides, which in turn make up proteins. Moreover, although there is no direct proof yet, there is plenty of circumstantial evidence that indicates mRNA splicing in eukaryotes is also catalyzed by RNA (in the form of "small nuclear RNAs" or snRNAs). To state that RNAs are only part of the information chain from DNAs to proteins is a misjustice to the complexity of RNA biology.
The small RNAs that are described in this article are not even catalytic; in fact, to your average RNA biochemist these small RNAs are not all that interesting. They are, however, very interesting to people who study gene regulation, because that appears to be the normal role of these small RNAs. Biotech companies are also interested because they are a way to target specific genes for inactivation.
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It has recently been shown that the 'junk' DNA, the stuff in between the protein producing genes, actually regulates protein production. These small RNA molecules created from the transcription of this junk DNA can interfere with the transcription of downstream genes. This interference prevents the production of proteins, and if used correctly could treat disease by limiting the production of inappropriate proteins.
This is an important discovery because most scientists ignored the existence of this 'junk', without acknowleging that everything in a cell has a purpose. Researchers have known that these non-protein producing DNA segments have existed for many years, only recently did someone ask why they existed. That is why this is an important discovery.
Karma: Censored (mostly affected by decency laws)
That's like saying that the discovery of the atom has brought us closer to finding a cure for AIDS
First of all AIDS is not the disease, HIV is the disease, AIDS is the final and most often fatal stage of an HIV infection.
The rRNA and the mRNA transcript the DNA and send it to another cell to be replicated
Um, no. DNA is replicated in the cell's own nucleus it doesn't get transfered to another cell to get replicated and sent back.
Sure, it has obviously, but almost every damn cell has RNA in it.
That maybe true but HIV is not a bacteria, which are cells, it is a virus and being a virus is not a cell, though they do have a lipid bi-layer envelope they don't make it themselves but rather steal it from a host cell.
So of course HIV has RNA to carry the message, everything does
well not exactly, HIV is a virus, most viruses only have DNA in them in broken bits because viruses contrary to popular oppinion are not actually alive (they can't reproduce on their own so they don't officially count as being alive). HIV is somewhat special in that it is a retrovirus which means that once it enters your cells it releses its RNA into your cells, the RNA reverse transcribes itself into DNA and integrates its newly created DNA segments into the DNA of your cell turning your cell into a factory for making more HIV and inhibiting the function of the infected cell, HIV has a particullar affinity for the cells of the immune system like macrophages and CD4 cells whcih is why people eventually get AIDS though anit-retroviral drugs and protease inhibitors have prolonged the period before AIDS develops.
ok. this is horribly offtopic, but i had to take the bait... lsd came from switzerland, not berkely
Well, its not quite a film of electrons, but we're apparently getting close. This quote is from Science... "This year, researchers turned their new attosecond strobes onto the action within atoms. In October, the Austrian and German members of the original team used their attosecond pulses to excite electrons in krypton atoms, each of which left behind an electron vacancy. With another laser pulse, they were then able to track the timing with which excited electrons gave up some of their energy and fell back into the more stable energy levels. It's not Hitchcock, but attosecond movies will give physicists a whole new view of life inside the atom."
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'Tis an ill wind that blows no minds...
However, it would be wrong to assume that *everything* in the body is there because it serves some purpose. There are clear cases in biology of remnant structures which don't serve any purpose in the animal's (or plant, for that matter) current environment.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)