After posting some microtubule stuff, it's time for an entry about mRNA.
RNA granules are very intriguing. They are thought to transport RNA in some cell types such as neurons or Oocytes, and store/degrade mRNA in other cell types. Recently the RNAi machinery is thought to localize to some of these dense structures too. How are the granules/processing bodies formed? Well it turns out that proteins thought to have prion like properties (TIA-1 and CPEB) may serve as scaffolds that support these granules. To read more check out this review in the latest JCB.
Ref: Paul Anderson and Nancy Kedersha. RNA granules JCB (2006) 172:803-808
- Log in to post comments
More like this
Flipping through the latest issue of Cell:
Ujwal Sheth from Roy Parker's lab details the molecular mechanism that targets RNAs with premature stop codons to processing-bodies (or p-bodies) via the non-sense mediated decay (NMD) pathway. P-bodies are dense cytoplasmic granule-like structures that…
I just wanted to post a brief entry on the newest paper from the Moore lab. I've already hinted at some of these results in a post from last year.
As you all know, mRNA is made and processed in the nucleus. During mRNA synthesis, all the introns must be removed and all the exon sequences must be…
There are plenty of large mRNA agregates in cells. In the past few years, two of these structures have gained quite a bit of attention, Stress Granules (SGs) and Processing Bodies (PBs). mRNAs in SGs are loaded with 48S complex, which consists of the small ribosomal subunit, the cap binding complex…
See this entry for background on inositols. Inositol-6-phosphate (aka Inositol hexaphosphate, phytic acid, phytate) is a strange compound.
Apparently plants make loads of it, and it is thought that they use this molecule to store phosphate. Also it would seem that lots of cancer researchers have…