Researchers at the Center for RNA Research, Institute for Basic Science (IBS), in Seoul, have published a study with critical new insights into the structure and function of the Dicer enzyme. Dicer is an enzyme required ...
A team of researchers from the University of Wisconsin, the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History, and Western Connecticut State University, has assembled the first draft genome of Phalangium opilio—the ...
Using specialized nanoparticles, MIT engineers have developed a way to turn off specific genes in cells of the bone marrow, which play an important role in producing blood cells. These particles could be tailored to help ...
Bio & Medicine
Oct 5, 2020
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597
Field trials in the Northwest and Southwest show that poplar trees can be genetically modified to reduce negative impacts on air quality while leaving their growth potential virtually unchanged, says an Oregon State University ...
Environment
Jan 6, 2020
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RNA interference (RNAi), a technique that can turn off specific genes inside living cells, holds great potential for treating many diseases caused by malfunctioning genes. However, it has been difficult for scientists to ...
Bio & Medicine
May 12, 2014
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Inspired by tiny particles that carry cholesterol through the body, MIT chemical engineers have designed nanoparticles that can deliver snippets of genetic material that turn off disease-causing genes.
Bio & Medicine
Feb 11, 2014
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(Phys.org) —Last month, researchers reported the creation of the first primitive brain-like structures made from human stem cells. To create the complex morphology of these cerebral organoids, cells within a proliferating ...
Using a technique known as “nucleic acid origami,” chemical engineers have built tiny particles made out of DNA and RNA that can deliver snippets of RNA directly to tumors, turning off genes expressed in cancer ...
Bio & Medicine
Jun 4, 2012
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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 ...
Biotechnology
Oct 9, 2011
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High-density lipoprotein's hauls excess cholesterol to the liver for disposal, but new research suggests "good cholesterol" can also act as a special delivery vehicle of destruction for cancer.
Bio & Medicine
Apr 1, 2011
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RNA interference (RNAi) is a system within living cells that helps to control which genes are active and how active they are. Two types of small RNA molecules – microRNA (miRNA) and small interfering RNA (siRNA) – are central to RNA interference. RNAs are the direct products of genes, and these small RNAs can bind to specific other RNAs and either increase or decrease their activity, for example by preventing a messenger RNA from producing a protein. RNA interference has an important role in defending cells against parasitic genes – viruses and transposons – but also in directing development as well as gene expression in general.
The RNAi pathway is found in many eukaryotes including animals and is initiated by the enzyme Dicer, which cleaves long double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) molecules into short fragments of ~20 nucleotides. One of the two strands of each fragment, known as the guide strand, is then incorporated into the RNA-induced silencing complex (RISC). The most well-studied outcome is post-transcriptional gene silencing, which occurs when the guide strand base pairs with a complementary sequence of a messenger RNA molecule and induces cleavage by Argonaute, the catalytic component of the RISC complex. This process is known to spread systemically throughout the organism despite initially limited molar concentrations of siRNA.
The selective and robust effect of RNAi on gene expression makes it a valuable research tool, both in cell culture and in living organisms because synthetic dsRNA introduced into cells can induce suppression of specific genes of interest. RNAi may also be used for large-scale screens that systematically shut down each gene in the cell, which can help identify the components necessary for a particular cellular process or an event such as cell division. Exploitation of the pathway is also a promising tool in biotechnology and medicine.
Historically, RNA interference was known by other names, including post transcriptional gene silencing, and quelling. Only after these apparently unrelated processes were fully understood did it become clear that they all described the RNAi phenomenon. In 2006, Andrew Fire and Craig C. Mello shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their work on RNA interference in the nematode worm C. elegans, which they published in 1998.
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