Scicasts News Media: New Role for RNA Interfere... Science Magazine: Follow the leader: how 5'-... Scicasts News Media: Common RNA Modification Li... Nature Protocols: MT @NatureAuthors: Nov iss... BGI develops RNA-Seq (Quantification) from as low as 100 Ng total RNA. Beijing Genomics Institute reported that they have achieved optimization RNA-Seq (Quantification) library construction with total RNA inputs as low as 100 ng. This breakthrough enables the application of RNA-Seq (Quantification) technology to experimental designs utilizing samples derived from small numbers of cells, such as those widely used in pharmaceutical research, cancer research, and immunology. RNA-Seq (Quantification), a version of Next Generation Sequencing (NGS), is used for transcriptome quantification and analyzing the gene expression of certain biological objects in specific conditions.
It can be widely applied in biomarker detection, basic medical research, drug discovery, among others. Compared with microarray technology, high-throughput RNA sequencing can provide comprehensive assessment of RNA expression profiles with the advantages of high-throughput data, low background, high sensitivity and repeatability. Explore further: Scientists grow longer-lasting salad greens. Unknown ocean bacteria create entirely new theories. The earth's most successful bacteria are found in the oceans and belong to the group SAR11. In a new study, researchers from Uppsala University provide an explanation for their success and at the same time call into question generally accepted theories about these bacteria.
In their analysis they have also identified a rare and hitherto unknown relative of mitochondria, the power stations inside cells. The findings were published in two articles in the journals Molecular Biology and Evolution and PLoS One in the last week. "The huge amounts of DNA information now being produced from the oceans gives us a glimpse of a world that could never be studied before. Bacteria belonging to the group SAR11 make up 30-40 percent of all bacteria cells in the oceans and therefore play a considerable role in global carbon cycles. According to previous research they are related to an equally specialized group of bacteria that includes the typhus bacterium. A micro-RNA as a key regulator of learning and Alzheimer's disease. Proteins are the molecular machines of the cell. They transport materials, cleave products or transmit signals – and for a long time, they have been a main focus of attention in molecular biology research.
In the last two decades, however, another class of critically important molecules has emerged: small RNA molecules, including micro-RNAs. It is now well established that micro-RNAs play a key role in the regulation of cell function. "A micro-RNA regulates the production of an estimated 300-400 proteins. This class of molecules can be regarded as a switch that coordinates the transition of cells from one state to another," explains Prof. MiRNA 34c was identified using a highly complex method called "massive parallel sequencing". In further mouse experiments, the researchers showed that miRNA 34c is actually causally involved in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease and memory disorders.
Physorg_com: Study links Fragile X Synd... Foresightnano: Controlling artificial mol... PhysOrg Science News: Non-coding RNA relocates g... Fabrice Leclerc: Enroweb: "Knowledge of the... Antoine Blanchard: "Knowledge of the sequence... Tssinews: "RNA Molecules Contain Hig... Foresight Institute: Controlling artificial mol... Non-coding RNA relocates genes when it's time to go to work. Cells develop and thrive by turning genes on and off as needed in a precise pattern, a process known as regulated gene transcription. In a paper published in the Nov. 9 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine say this process is even more complex than previously thought, with regulated genes actually relocated to other, more conducive places in the cell nucleus. "When regulated gene transcription goes awry, many human diseases result, such as diabetes, atherosclerosis, cancer and growth defects in children," said Michael G.
Rosenfeld, MD, a professor in the UC San Diego Department of Medicine, Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and senior author of the study. "We've shown that rather than being activated at certain, random locations within the cell nucleus, regulated genes can dynamically relocate. NcRNA are molecules that are not translated into proteins. Henry Furneaux Ph.D.: H. Gobind Khorana, 1968 No...
DailyMe Science: H. Gobind Khorana, 1968 No... KQEDscience: What You Eat Affects Your... Physorg_com: Study reveals new role for... TheScientistLLC: Speak, RNA: A trip through... Orin Holland: Beautiful enantiopure RNA... Scientific Reports: A Non-coding RNA of Insect... Scicasts News Media: New Level of Genetic Diver... Scientific American: RNA Editing to Create 'Acq... NESCent: Life's deliberate typos: I... Darwin Evolution: The evolution of RNA editi... Foresight Institute: Finding small molecules to...
Plant biology: By far the most popular re... Plantbiology: Current Biology 'Mobile 24... RNA duplicating RNA, a step closer to the origin of life. According to the “RNA world” model of life's origin, RNA performed all of the operations that are essential to life. RNA alone passed on genetic information and catalyzed the reactions of basic metabolism; DNA and proteins were not in the picture. The RNA world hypothesis is an appealingly simple model for simple early life forms, as it allows the complex array of biochemical interactions among proteins, DNA, and RNA to evolve gradually. Our current natural world no longer uses RNA enzymes that act on their own to perform most biological functions.
To better understand ancient RNA enzymes, modern scientists have to rely on proxies, like engineered RNA "ribozymes" that have catalytic functions without the need for proteins. However, scientists have had trouble creating a proxy for the first self-replicating molecule, or even an RNA ribozyme that can copy an RNA that's long enough to have further biological functions. Aniela Wochner and her coauthors have overcome that difficulty. Breakthrough lights way for RNA discoveries. The ability to tag proteins with a green fluorescent light to watch how they behave inside cells so revolutionized the understanding of protein biology that it earned the scientific teams who developed the technique Nobel Prizes in 2008. Now, researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College have developed a similar fluorescent tool that can track the mysterious workings of the various forms of cellular RNA.
In the July 29 issue of Science, the Weill Cornell investigators report how they developed an RNA mimic of green fluorescent protein (GFP) -- which they dubbed Spinach -- and describe how it will help unlock the secrets of the complex ways that RNA sustains human life as well as contributes to disease. "These fluorescent RNAs offer us a tool that will be critical for understanding the diverse roles that RNA plays in human biology," says the study's senior author, Dr. Samie Jaffrey, an associate professor of pharmacology at Weill Cornell Medical College. The study's first author, Dr. Novel technique uses RNA interference to block inflammation. Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers – along with collaborators from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Alnylam Pharmaceuticals – have found a way to block, in an animal model, the damaging inflammation that contributes to many disease conditions.
In their report receiving early online publication in Nature Biotechnology, the investigators describe using small interfering RNA technology to silence the biochemical signals that attract a particular group of inflammatory cells to areas of tissue damage. "The white blood cells known as monocytes play a critical role in the early stages of the immune response," says Matthias Nahrendorf, MD, PhD, of the MGH Center for Systems Biology, the paper's senior author. "We now know there are two subsets of monocytes – an inflammatory subset that defends against pathogens and a reparative subset that supports healing.
"These inflammatory monocytes are involved in almost every major disease," Nahrendorf explains. Study reveals new role for RNA interference during chromosomal replication. At the same time that a cell's DNA gets duplicated, a third of it gets super-compacted into repetitive clumps called heterochromatin. This dense packing serves to repress or "silence" the DNA sequences within -- which could wreck the genome if activated -- as well as regulate the activity of nearby genes. When the cell divides, the daughter cells not only inherit a copy of the mother cell's DNA, but also the exact pattern in which that DNA is clumped into heterochromatin. This "epigenetic" mode of inheritance—information not transmitted through the DNA code itself but by the way in which it is packaged—has long been investigated by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Professor and HHMI-GBMF Investigator Rob Martienssen.
In a landmark study that was hailed as one of the breakthroughs of the year by Science magazine in 2002, Martienssen and his colleagues showed that the inheritance of heterochromatin depends on a set of mechanisms broadly defined as RNA interference (RNAi). Team finds stable RNA nano-scaffold within virus core. With the discovery of a RNA nano-scaffold that remains unusually stable in the body, researchers at the University of Cincinnati (UC) have overcome another barrier to the development of therapeutic RNA nanotechnology.
Peixuan Guo, PhD, Dane and Mary Louise Miller Endowed Chair and professor of biomedical engineering, and his colleagues in UC's College of Engineering and Applied Sciences report the construction of a thermodynamically stable RNA nanoparticle online in the journal Nature Nanotechnology. The nanoparticle, constructed from a three-way junction (3WJ) motif of packaging RNA (pRNA) molecules, can serve as a platform for building larger, multifunctional nanoparticles, says Guo, which can then be injected into the body to deliver therapeutics to targeted cells. "RNA nanoparticles have applications in treating cancers and viral infections," he says, "but one of the problems in the field is that RNA nanoparticles are relatively unstable. New technique gives precise picture of how regulatory RNA controls gene activity.
A new technique developed by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine allows researchers to identify the exact DNA sequences and locations bound by regulatory RNAs. This information is necessary to understand how the recently identified RNA molecules control the expression of neighboring and distant genes. The study offers a startling glimpse into the intricate world of gene expression and how RNA, once thought to be only a lowly cellular messenger, actively unlocks our DNA-based genome.
"We used to have to just infer where these RNAs were acting based on their biological effects," said Howard Chang, MD, PhD, professor of dermatology. "But now we can identify precisely where on the chromatin they are binding. We've found that these sites are focal, numerous and sequence-specific. " Deciphering the role of regulatory RNAs is critically important to understand many cellular functions, including those involved in development, cancer and regeneration. MicrobeWorld: Plant RNA virus replicatio...
Science Magazine: Listen to the great story... Science Magazine: RNA Mimics of Green Fluore... PLoS Comp Biol: #PLoS: From Structure Pred... Twitter. BioMed Central: New #BMCBiology paper disc... BioMedCentral: RT @genomebiology: Manolis... TS-Si News Service: "Scientists Find Inexact R... TS-Si News Service: "Genetic Stop Points and D... Sciencedaily: New level of genetic diver... Sciencedaily: New role for RNA interfere... Nature News&Comment: Evidence of altered RNA st... Nature Chemistry: Our enzyme-free RNA copyin... Nature Chemistry: Check out Chuan He's Comme... Nature Chemistry: Super plenary from Chuan H... Twitter. Merck shutters RNAi research facility. Less than five years after betting $1.1 billion on the power of RNA-interference (RNAi) to treat disease, pharmaceutical powerhouse Merck is shutting down the San Francisco research facility it acquired when it purchased Sirna Therapeutics, a biotechnology firm that specialized in RNAi, in 2006.
The announcement, first reported last week by Xconomy, is another blow to a young field that has been pummeled over the past year. In November, Swiss pharma firm Roche announced that it was pulling out of RNAi after investing $500 million over three years, and Novartis, another Swiss pharmaceutical giant, elected not to extend a partnership with Alnylam, an RNAi biotechnology company in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In February, the New York Times reported that Pfizer and Abbott Laboratories were also cutting back on their RNAi investments. Nevertheless, Merck spokesman Ian McConnell says that the company will continue to have over 100 scientists working on RNA-based treatments. Natureblogs: RNA editing may not be as... Nature Protocols: From our Forum: any sugges... Nature News&Comment: RNA editing may not be as...
Nature News&Comment: RNA editing may not be as... Natureblogs: Merck shutters RNAi resear... Nature News&Comment: RT @betterbio: DUDE, THEY... Nature News&Comment: Fun! @edyong209 has storif... Nature News&Comment: RT @Ananyo: Turns out we r... Henry Furneaux Ph.D.: Noncoding RNA alters splic... Henry Furneaux Ph.D.: Genetic Variation in an mi...
Henry Furneaux Ph.D.: RNAi promotes heterochroma... Henry Furneaux Ph.D.: The RNA-binding protein Hu... Twitter. Henry Furneaux Ph.D.: A Long Noncoding RNA Contr... Henry Furneaux Ph.D.: Caspase-mediated cleavage... Henry Furneaux Ph.D.: RNA , RNA and RNA ! Free... Henry Furneaux Ph.D.: Alnylam Presents ALN-VSP,... Henry Furneaux Ph.D.: A molecular fossil of the... Henry Furneaux Ph.D.: CTCF Regulates Ataxin-7 Ex... Henry Furneaux Ph.D.: PolyU tail of rho-independ... Henry Furneaux Ph.D.: RNA silencing in Monterey... Henry Furneaux Ph.D.: A ceRNA Hypothesis: The Ro... Henry Furneaux Ph.D.: Structural basis for RNA 3... Henry Furneaux Ph.D.: RNA: Life's Indispensable... Henry Furneaux Ph.D.: Integrative Regulatory Map... Henry Furneaux Ph.D.: Synergistic Silencing: Com... Henry Furneaux Ph.D.: Dicer recognizes the 5[pri... Henry Furneaux Ph.D.: C–T variant in a miRNA tar...
E! Science News: Researchers uncover a new... E! Science News: Breakthrough lights way fo... E! Science News: Non-coding RNA has role in... E! Science News: Noncoding RNA may promote... Sciencemagazine: Follow the leader: how 5'-... Sciencemagazine: Hold and release: nucleoti...