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Tag: "rnas" at biology news

Researchers rein in regulatory RNAs

A team of scientists led by Dr. Kuniya Abe from the RIKEN BioResource Center in Japan has performed one of the most comprehensive genome-wide experimental analyses of sense-antisense transcripts to date. Their findings are published in the April issue of the journal Genome Research. . Sense-antisense transcripts, or SATs, are pairs of RNA molecules generated from opposite DNA strands at the same...

MicroRNAs play a big part in gene regulation - and evolution

Regulating when and where certain proteins are made is crucial to the normal functioning of living things. To make proteins, information from DNA is transcribed into RNA molecules and then translated into the amino acids building blocks of proteins. But not all genes code for proteins--some make RNA molecules called microRNAs. These small RNA molecules interfere with--and therefore control--the p...

Molecular steps involved in the creation of gene-silencing microRNAs identified

First discovered only a few brief years ago, microRNAs are small, remarkably powerful molecules that appear to play a pivotal role in gene silencing, one of the body's main strategies for regulating its genome. A scant 22 nucleotides in length, miRNAs appear to work by binding to and somehow interfering with messenger RNA, itself responsible for translating genes into proteins. . But how do miRNA...

Scientists find microRNAs regulate plant development

The plant hormone indole-3-acetic acid (IAA), commonly referred to as auxin, plays a major role in regulating plant growth and development. Auxin influences development by affecting the expression of numerous genes that control the processes of cell division and cell expansion in specific plant tissues at specific stages during the plant life cycle - e.g. for leaves, roots, and floral organs to d...

Once given 'no respect,' cells' tiny RNAS take driver's seat

Ribonucleic acid, or RNA, has long been thought to be important only to translate a gene's DNA into the proteins that are cells' workhorses. But new evidence shows that tiny bits of RNA not used to make proteins actually play central roles in normal biology and in the development of cancers. . "Scientists have known for a few years that production of these tiny RNAs, known as microRNAs, is only s...

miRNAs and musculature

In an effort to understand the biological function of the microRNA mir1, Drs. Nicholas Sokol and Victor Ambros (Darmouth Medical School) have studied the expression profile, transcriptional regulation and loss-of-function phenotype of Drosophila mir-1 (Dmir-1). Mir-1 is an evolutionarily conserved miRNA, whose expression in mouse and humans is limited to heart and skeletal muscle. Strikingly, th...

Micro RNAs play role in egg making

Researchers at Northwestern University and Carnegie Mellon University have found that a recently described class of molecules called microRNAs (miRNAs) play an important role in regulating oogenesis, the process by which females make eggs. MiRNAs silence genes by binding to genetic elements called messenger RNA and preventing them from making new proteins -- the molecules primarily responsible fo...

MicroRNAs have shaped the evolution of the majority of mammalian genes

RNA continues to shed its reputation as DNA's faithful sidekick. Now, researchers in the lab of Whitehead Institute Member David Bartel have found that a class of small RNAs called microRNAs influence the evolution of genes far more widely than previous research had indicated. . .. In order to make a protein, a gene codes for a specific molecule called messenger RNA, or mRNA. Each mRNA molecule c...

Delaware scientists make significant advance in study of small RNAs

Scientists from the University of Delaware have made a significant advance in the study of small ribonucleic acids (RNAs), discovering 10 times more small RNAs in the plant Arabidopsis than previously had been identified. The advance is reported in the Sept. 2 issue of Science magazine. . The research was conducted over the course of the last year and a half by teams from the laboratories headed...

Twin molecular scissors link creation of microRNAs with gene-silencing

One of the body's primary strategies for regulating its genome is a kind of targeted gene silencing orchestrated by small molecules called microRNAs, or miRNAs. First observed only a few years ago, these molecules appear to inactivate messenger RNA, itself responsible for translating genes into proteins. Scientists have been eager to know more about miRNAs, clearly important players on the geneti...

Non-coding RNAs help silence the mammalian transcription

Dr. Shirley Tilghman and colleagues (Princeton University) lend new insight into the mechanism of genomic imprinting, demonstrating a necessary role for a non-coding RNA transcript in the silencing of an imprinted gene cluster in mice. . Imprinting, or the differential expression of a gene based upon which parent it has been inherited from, is integral to normal growth and development. Two human...

miRNA-mediated silencing of mRNAs

Dr. Elisa Izaurrralde and colleagues (EMBL; Max-Planck-Institute for Developmental Biology-Tuebingen) provide new mechanistic insight into gene silencing by miRNAs . .. .. Dr. Izaurralde and colleagues demonstrate that the P-body protein, GW182, interacts with the miRNA effector Argonaute proteins as well as mRNA degradation e...

Scientists discover role for dueling RNAs

Researchers have found that a class of RNA molecules, previously thought to have no function, may in fact protect sex cells from self-destructing. These findings will be published in the November 17 issue of the journal Cell. . Central to this discovery is the fundamental process of gene expression. When a gene is ready to produce a protein, the two strands of DNA that comprise the gene unravel....

MicroRNAs can be tumor suppressors

University of Virginia researchers have discovered that microRNAs, a form of genetic material, can function as tumor suppressors in laboratory studies. . .. ....

MicroRNAs as tumor suppressors

In the May 1st issue of G&D, Drs. Yong Sun Lee and Anindya Dutta (UVA) reveal that microRNAs can function as tumor suppressors in vitro. . .. Studying chromosomal HMGA2 translocations...

Study shows big power of small RNAs, not just proteins, in halting cancer

. “Collaboration among different CS...