RNA and DNA
Ain't they pretty?
Ever hear of Thomas Jefferson University? Well, neither had I, until today. It turns out to be a mostly professional/grad
student sort of place, located in Philadelphia.
One of its subdivisions is the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center, of which I
definitely have heard, multiple times.
Out of SKCC emanates an interesting report on a factor contributing to
metastasis of ovarian cancer. It
involves something symbolized by lncRNA.
That’s l as in “long”, not “one”.
Those symbols always get twisted up in my brain.
So, you know a lot about RNA, right. It is a nucleic acid molecule, not much
different from DNA. Most people know RNA
as a messenger molecule, functioning to carry information from the genes
imbedded in DNA to a ribosome, where it is used to manufacture the protein
molecules which keep us all purring along.
You might call such RNAs as “coding RNSs”, because they carry the “code”
for the protein’s structure. Thus,
lncRNA stands for “long non-coding RNA”.
Long non-coding RNA is a product off what once was referred to as “junk
DNA”, because the product had no obvious use.
Now we know that these ncRNA molecules perform an essential service;
they regulate which genes are “expressed”.
Probably some ncRNA is responsible for the fact that you don’t grow
toenails in your eyeballs.
Geez! This was
supposed to be a simple little report, but it has gotten well out of hand. The gist of the matter is that these folks at
SKCC have shown that specific lncRNAs are strongly associated with metastasis
of OVCA . They did this using
“bioinformatics”, which involves feeding a large mass of data to a computer
algorithm, and seeing what comes out.
Read about it, below. There is a
possibility that new therapies could be directed against these particular
lncRNAs
In previous blogs I have said that, if had it to do over
again, I would go into molecular biology.
However, as I have the small-muscle dexterity of a walrus but am not
entirely hopeless at mathematics, I think bioinformatics would be the better
choice.
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