Gene expression regulation: lessons from noncoding RNAs
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15282, USA
- Corresponding author: mihailescum{at}duq.edu
This extract was created in the absence of an abstract.
Our view of RNA function changed a great deal from the discovery of messenger RNA (mRNA), transfer RNA (tRNA), ribosomal RNA (rRNA), the deciphering of the genetic code, and of the roles these RNAs play in translation, during the 1950–1965 gold years. The 1960s–1980s period shone the spotlight on mRNA processing events and small RNAs that are part of small RNA–protein complexes essential for splicing. The discovery of RNA catalytic activity in the early 1980s transformed our thinking about RNA function, and this was just the beginning, as the discovery of both short and long noncoding RNAs in the 1990s and after 2000 triggered a new revolution in the RNA field.
The microRNA (miRNA) story started with the discoveries in the Ambros and Ruvkun labs in the late 1980s–early 1990s that in C. elegans, lin-4, a repressor of the protein encoding lin-14, did not contain a conventional …
