The group I self-splicing introns, like other RNAs and RNA–protein complexes, undergo multiple conformational changes in completing two transesterification reactions that cleave the intron and ligate ...

Recent developments in synthetic biology have enabled numerous techniques for programming cellular functions in industrial biotechnology 1, agriculture 2, and medicine 3,4,5. Powerful genetic tools, ...

This release is available in German. Scientists at the Technical University of Munich and the Helmholtz Zentrum Muenchen and along with their colleagues from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory ...

The human genome is just over 6 feet 8 inches long, which is 2 inches taller than the average NBA basketball player and in total, a lot of nucleotides! But what if the amount of sequence diversity ...

While working on a COVID-19-related project during the lockdown, Kärt Tomberg, PhD, found herself thinking about introns. She was part of a team working on the spike protein used in vaccines. Her task ...

Shown is the splicing pathway. The pre-messenger RNA (pre-mRNA) has exons (blue) and introns (pink). The spliceosome (not shown) was known to catalyze two chemical reactions (black arrows) in a ...

Researchers at the University of Toronto's Donnelly Center for Cellular and Biomolecular Research have found nearly one million new exons—stretches of DNA that are expressed in mature RNA—in the human ...

Two molecular control factors play a decisive role in what is known as splicing, the cutting and assembly of mature messenger RNA—a prerequisite for protein synthesis in the cell. The poorly ...

Alternative splicing (AS) is a key technique for increasing transcriptome and proteomic diversity from a small genome. Almost all human gene transcripts are alternatively spliced, resulting in protein ...

As basic building blocks of cells, proteins have vital functions in the organism. The instructions for their synthesis are found in the DNA. So that an exact blueprint for each protein can reach the ...

In amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and frontotemporal dementia, loss of the RNA-binding protein TDP-43 from the nucleus creates a surge of mis-spliced mRNAs in neurons. So far, only one of these errant ...