Looking for the key to secrets of RNA under the lamp-post
- Department of Molecular Biosciences, The Wenner-Gren Institute, Stockholm University, 106 91 Stockholm, Sweden
- Corresponding author: marie.ohman{at}molbio.su.se
This extract was created in the absence of an abstract.
There is an old joke about a man who searches diligently under a lamp-post at night. He explains to passer-by that he has lost his keys. “Did you lose them under the lamp-post?” “No,” he says. “Then why are you looking under the lamp-post?” “Because the light is better here.”
Are we currently looking for the keys to the secrets of RNA under the lamp-post? By revisiting the first issues of RNA published in 1995, it is clear that many articles tested hypotheses based on mechanistic models built on the determination of secondary and tertiary structures of RNA. In a perspective piece in the first issue, Olke Uhlenbeck opens with the statement, “A basic tenet of the emerging RNA religion is that most, if not all, RNA molecules fold into well-defined three-dimensional structures.” Many of us are still true believers of this RNA religion, but it seems that the focus …
