
From ScienceDaily:
Paper. (paywall)Our genome is made up of 6,000 million pieces of DNA that combine four “flavors”: A, C, G and T (Adenine, Cytosine, Guanine and Thymine). It is our Alphabet. But to this base we must add some regulation, just like the spelling and grammar of that alphabet: this is what we call Epigenetics.
“In epigenetics, there there are “accents,” called DNA methylation, which means having a C or a methyl-C. The first one usually means that a gene is expressed and active, while the second one implies that a gene is silent and inactive. Our DNA “speaks” when it produces another molecule called RNA (Ribonucleic Acid). Until very recently, it was believed that this molecule was only a poorly regulated intermediate capable of producing proteins (such as insulin, hemoglobin and others) under DNA’s orders. “Today, an article published in Cancer Discovery by Manel Esteller, Director of the Epigenetics and Cancer Biology Program of Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL), ICREA Researcher and Professor of Genetics at the University of Barcelona, explains that this RNA also has its own spelling and grammar, just like DNA. These “epigenetics of RNA” are called epitranscriptome.” – Manel Esteller, Pier Paolo Pandolfi. The Epitranscriptome of Noncoding RNAs in Cancer. Cancer Discovery, 2017; DOI: 10.1158/2159-8290.CD-16-1292More.
So not only does DNA have spelling and grammar but so does RNA, as a sort of cognate language, instead of being “a poorly regulated intermediate capable of producing proteins.”
File under: Why the sea is boiling hot.
See also: Epigenetic change: Lamarck, wake up, you’re wanted in the conference room!
Follow UD News at Twitter!
Interesting paper abstract. Thanks.
Did this term appear 5 years ago?
http://genomebiology.biomedcen.....-13-10-175
And last year here:
http://rnajournal.cshlp.org/content/22/2/169
Here’s another related paper:
http://science.sciencemag.org/...../6292/1408
Alfred Russel, Dionisio:
Here is another recent review:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5167638/
gpuccio,
That’s a very interesting paper. Thanks.
gpuccio @4:
It seems like the paper you referred to is cited by this paper:?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5303883/
Which is here:
http://www.molcells.org/journa......2017.2319
gpuccio @4:
In the link you provided they also list this paper:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27345446
Which is here:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.....152.f02t02
Which apparently is cited by this paper:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27351916
Which is here:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi.....16.1203504
Which apparently is cited by this paper:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27802489
Which is here:
http://iovs.arvojournals.org/a.....id=2578865
Dionisio:
Yes, it seems it’s a hot topic! 🙂
gpuccio:
At this pace of biology-related research papers and discoveries appearing online, the overwhelming saturation of information will make the so-called “big data” problems in physics and astronomy look unimpressive. 🙂