Word: rna
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...Cech examined a one-cell organism to study strands of ribonucleic acid, or RNA. Specifically, he investigated RNA splicing, in which cells convert long RNA strands into shorter ones, removing unneeded stretches. It was previously thought that enzymes catalyzed the cutting and reassembling process, and that RNA itself played a more passive role...
...Cech discovered a case in which the RNA catalyzed its own rearrangement. Since that discovery, scientists have found many other examples of the catalytic properties of RNA...
...next step would be to conduct drug-binding experiments. According to D’Souza, an effective drug would target the interaction between RNA and the reverse transcriptase protein, unlike current drugs which target just the protein...
Ironically, D’Souza made her name by mapping out the structure of the largest RNA molecule using the nuclear magnetic resonance technique. “There are very few structural biologists who want to work with very large molecules,” D’Souza says. Before D’Souza’s work delineating the structure of an encapsidation signal of the murine leukemia retrovirus, researchers had only done the same for molecules of about half that size...
...says he discovered D’Souza’s lab by “a stroke of luck,” and that he hopes to work there until he graduates. “What really interested me about her research was her novel idea to look at RNA-protein interactions...it’s something that could probably have a higher payoff,” Katz says...