Self-Generated Touch A Neural Perspective 英文参考文献.docVIP

Synopses of Research Articles Looping Out Introns to Help Splicing Richard Robinson | DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0040041 One of the most surprising discoveries in molecular biology was that a gene’s coding region is broken up into smaller pieces (the exons) interrupted by noncoding portions called introns. After the DNA is transcribed into RNA, and before the RNA can leave the nucleus, the introns must be cut out and the exons spliced together. help the splicing machinery remove the intron. The authors further support their model by showing that splicing could also be stimulated just by inserting complementary RNA sequences at each end of the intron. These have the ability to bind to one another, forming the intron into a loop. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0040041.g001 Since introns were discovered However, they note that in some introns, only one hnRNP A/B site, positioned on the upstream end, is needed to promote splicing, and it does so nearly as well as when sites at both ends are present. The reason may lie in the particular introns that display this behavior—they contain a sequence which may itself bind an hnRNP A/B protein, thus providing the missing binding site and leading to loop formation. Con?rmation or refutation of this hypothesis will have to await future experiments. Notwithstanding, the model is generally appealing because the two ends of many human introns are enriched in binding sites for these proteins. Overall, this mechanism suggests that hnRNP proteins can remodel the structure of prespliced RNAs, a property, the authors suggest, that could be important for both splicing and alternative splicing in a wide variety of genes. Two hnRNP proteins interact to connect the two ends of an intron, forming a loop to help the cell’s splicing machinery remove the intron. in 1977, the details of the splicing operations have been a major object of study. For splicing to occur, the ends of an intron must be brought into close proximity, and a number of protei