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To: FaultLine who wrote (445)	2/11/2003 2:30:51 PM
From: Win Smith	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 603

RNA Trades Bit Part for Starring Role in the Cell nytimes.com [ Ok, I was meaning to post this when it came up, and your Watson/Crick post motivated me to go digging. I don't think these are exactly new results, just elaboration. The "central dogma" is perhaps too simplistic. There's an "origin of life" theory that says RNA is much more central than DNA, I think maybe it dates from this paper: W.Gilbert, "The RNA world", Nature, 319, p.618, 1986 . (edit: supplementary reference: nobel.se ) Excerpt of the NYT story: ] Under what is known as the central dogma of genetics, genes, which are the recipes for making proteins, are part of the DNA of the chromosomes. When a protein is to be made, the DNA is copied onto a corresponding piece of single-stranded RNA, known as messenger RNA, that delivers the recipe to the cell's protein-making machinery. Proteins make up most of a cell and perform most of its functions, including turning genes on and off. But new evidence suggests that some RNA is not merely the intermediary between DNA and protein, but the end product. Some huge stretches of DNA that do not contain protein-coding genes and have been considered "junk" actually hold the code for some of this RNA. A study published in May by scientists at Affymetrix of Santa Clara, Calif., a maker of gene chips, reported that in addition to the DNA's containing the recipes for proteins, a lot more DNA was being copied into RNA. The recently deciphered mouse genome was found to have about twice as much in common with the human genome as could be accounted for by protein-coding genes. Areas of the genome that are similar are thought to have important functions, explaining why they have not mutated as species evolved. At least part of this overlap appears to be genes that produce RNA as their end product. What all of this RNA is doing is not clear, and much of it may have no function. Dr. Sean Eddy, a researcher at Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Washington University, said cells might just be sloppy, turning far more DNA into RNA than they needed. But mounting evidence suggests that at least some RNA is involved in regulating the way genes are turned on or off. Dr. John S. Mattick, a molecular biologist at the University of Queensland in Australia, holds the most radical view: that RNA provides the command and control of cells. Proteins, Dr. Mattick said, are like bricks and beams. But the RNA determines whether those bricks and beams become office buildings or houses. This RNA network, he said, provides the complexity that separates higher life forms from simpler ones.