Green Glow Shows RNA Editing in Real Time
By Katherine Harmon | December 25, 2011 | SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN
It’s a long way from gene to protein. The dogmatic scenario is: DNA gets transcribed into RNA, which gets translated into protein. But in real life, and in real living things, the workings aren’t quite that simple.
One example: individual units of RNA sometimes need to be converted, in what’s called RNA editing, into related entities for the ultimate formation of the right proteins. An enzyme called ADAR (adenosine deaminase, RNA-specific) is responsible for a specific such alteration important for good nervous system function.
Now researchers have devised a technique for seeing this particular RNA editing process in real time—the corrected strand gives off a green glow—and even for the restoration of functionality. “We can take a mutant version of a gene and restore its function,” Brown University’s Robert Reenan explained in a prepared statement. The findings were described online Sunday in the journal Nature Methods (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group).
Search: Rna ‘Goes To The Rescue’ Of Cells In Crisis, Discovery Telethon ! http://newish.info/192521-search-rna-goes-to-the-rescue-of-cells-in-crisis-discovery-telethon
