Typical human cells are mortal and cannot forever renew themselves. Scientists have been scrambling to discover ways to utilize telomerase to make human cells immortal. As it later turned out, telomerase exists in almost all eukaryotic organisms, including humans, and plays a crucial role in aging and cancer. The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded in 2009 “for the discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase.” Telomerase was first isolated from a unicellular organism living in pond scum. The study of RNA and telomere biology in corn smut may provide opportunities for finding novel mechanisms for mRNA metabolism and telomerase biogenesis. Corn smut, also called Mexican truffle, is edible and adds a delicious umami effect to many dishes, for example tamales and tacos. In this study Chen’s group discovered the unexpected mRNA-derived telomerase RNA in the model fungal organism Ustilago maydis or corn smut. The discovery of dual-function mRNA biogenesis in this work might lead to innovative ways of making future mRNA vaccines. This new approach has advantages over DNA vaccines which run the potential risk of being deleteriously and permanently incorporated into our DNA. In these vaccines, the mRNA molecules are eventually degraded and then absorbed by our bodies. For example, several COVID-19 vaccines use messenger RNA as a means to produce viral spike proteins. “We will need to do a lot more research to understand the underlying mechanism of such an unusual RNA biogenesis pathway.”īasic research on the metabolism and regulation of mRNA has led to important medical applications. Most RNA molecules are synthesized independently and here we uncovered a dual function mRNA that can be used to produce a protein or to make a noncoding telomerase RNA, which is really unique,” said Chen. “Our finding from this paper is paradigm-shifting. In this study, Chen’s group shows that a fungal telomerase RNA is processed from a protein-coding mRNA, instead of being synthesized independently. Telomerase is crucial for cellular immortality in cancer and stem cells. Telomerase RNA is one of the noncoding RNAs that assembles along with telomerase proteins to form the enzyme telomerase. “About 70 percent of the human genome is used to make noncoding RNAs that don’t code for protein sequences but have other uses.” “Actually, there are many RNAs (ribonucleic acids) that are not used to make proteins,” explained Chen. Messenger RNA acts as the messenger to build proteins. Messenger RNA molecules carry the genetic information from the DNA in the nucleus of the cell to the cytoplasm where the proteins are made. The central dogma of molecular biology specifies the order in which genetic information is transferred from DNA to make proteins. view moreįor the very first time, a study led by Julian Chen and his group in Arizona State University’s School of Molecular Sciences and the Biodesign Institute’s Center for the Mechanism of Evolution, has discovered an unprecedented pathway producing telomerase RNA from a protein-coding messenger RNA (mRNA). Image: left to right: Professor Julian Chen and his collaborators from the School of Molecular Sciences at Arizona State University, Dhenugen Logeswaran and Khadiza Akhter.
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