RNA May 'Run' Genetic Coding

leonbrooks writes "First a Stanford Medicine Magazine article speaks about RNA 'produced by plants that turn genes on and off', and now a Science Magazine issue says 'For a long time, RNA has lived in the shadow of its more famous chemical cousin DNA and of the proteins that supposedly took over RNA's functions in the transition from the 'RNA world' to the modern one. The shadow cast has been so deep that a whole universe [of RNA] has remained hidden from view, until recently' and speaks of 'an order of magnitude more transcripts than genes', suggesting that more actual coding is done through RNA than DNA. Is everything we know about genetics off-base? (no pun intended)"

Comments

Science

[Mozk]

This is how science evolves. One theory revises another. At least they're willing to say they they were wrong, unlike hundreds of years ago.

Re:Science

[QuantumG]

There's nothing to be wrong about here. It's simply a question of focus. It took a long time to get to the point we are with genomics, now we can look at proteins and transcription control via RNA and actually discover what is going on.

Re:Science

[Tim C]

Thats not entirely true - scientists have held their hands up and said "we got it wrong" since people started doing science. Likewise, there have always been people who - for whatever reason - have not done so, even when presented with evidence proving it.

Often it's because it's incredibly hard to admit even to yourself that the thing you've spent most of your working life on so far is wrong, that you've "wasted" all that time. Also, don't forget that there have been times when theory Y has replaced theory X, only for it to turn out that theory X is *also* right (I'm thinking especially of wave/particle duality - for a long time we "knew" that light was made of particles, then we "knew" that it was actually made of waves, now we "know" better)

oh good lord

[CupBeEmpty]

ok as someone that works in this field let me say this:

RNAi is a very useful tool, but this is definitely several years behind the curve. RNA has been shown to regulate much more than previously thought. However talk about "the secret world of RNA" is pretty much like claiming that there is a "secret world of open source software." Neither one is very secret or very new.

The biggest contention I have is this quote from the article: "This knack of completely eliminating a protein makes RNAi a valuable research tool." This is wrong, because RNAi does not work like this at all. This is actually one of the drawbacks to using RNAi to eliminate proteins. It does not eliminate, it reduces. To get rid of a certain protein, the classic method is to completely remove the DNA that codes that protein from the organism studied. This is referred to as a "knock out" because the organism has no ability to make that proteind from the removed DNA. RNAi however, provides only a "knock down" because the DNA is still there and no matter how much RNAi is used there is still some expression of the protein. Also, many RNAi protocols are transient supressors not permanent knock outs of protein.

So basically this is an exciting new field but don't necessarily believe all the hype because this is no miracle answer. The article is good, but oversimplified.

C'mon

[Otter]

Is everything we know about genetics off-base?

It's worth noting that the field of "genetics" precedes even the identification of DNA and RNA. It may be that what we now know about gene regulation is wildly incomplete (although even that is unlikely, although possible) but Mendelian genetics is completely agnostic as to whether "genes" are protein-coding or not.