Way to go, RNA
- Kimmel Center for Biology and Medicine at the Skirball Institute and Department of Microbiology, New York University School of Medicine, New York, New York 10016, USA
- Corresponding author: joel.belasco{at}med.nyu.edu
This extract was created in the absence of an abstract.
Although the field of RNA biology can trace its origin to the early 20th century, it first achieved prominence in the decade from 1955 to 1965 with pivotal breakthroughs that included the discovery of ribosomes, tRNA, and mRNA and the cracking of the genetic code. The next 30 years witnessed many other seminal discoveries, such as mRNA splicing, catalytic RNA, and regulatory RNA. To meet the needs of this flourishing field of investigation, those four decades concluded 20 years ago with the founding of the RNA Society and its monthly journal RNA.
Progress in the field since then is well illustrated by advances in any number of subdisciplines. Consider the two principal fates of mRNA: translation and degradation. By 1990, much was understood about translation in bacterial and eukaryotic cells, despite the dearth of structural detail at that time. In contrast, descriptions of mRNA degradation were still largely phenomenological, …
