Less isn’t always more
- Department of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, Cell Biology and Chemistry, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 60208, USA
This extract was created in the absence of an abstract.
A favorite experiment of RNA scientists is the “cutdown” or “boundary” experiment where an RNA of interest is truncated from its 5′ or 3′ end and the function of the smaller molecules evaluated. Such experiments often reveal that only a small part of a large RNA molecule is needed for the function of interest. In addition, by reducing the number of alternative conformational states that can plague RNA preparations, truncated RNAs that emerge from boundary experiments are often more active than the original molecule. A common complication in the interpretation of boundary experiments arises from the general way in which RNAs fold into their active structures. As we all know, RNA secondary structure elements often form between two or more parts of the molecule that are quite distant on the primary sequence. A boundary experiment performed on an RNA containing a critical long-range secondary structure element will identify as essential …
