The many roles of RNA

1
The many roles of RNA

• Fran Lewitter
• Head of Biocomputing
• Whitehead Institute

2
Central dogma
The flow of genetic information
transcription
translation
DNA
RNA
Protein
3
DNA notoriety
4
History of RNA

• Late 1800s - 2nd kind of nucleic acid not in the
  nucleus (rRNA)
• 1920s - sugar for DNA vs RNA
• 1958 - tRNA (Hoagland)
• 1960s - mRNA

Relative Amount of RNA in E. coli rRNA 80 tRNA
15 mRNA 5
5
New Roles of RNA

• ncRNAs - functional RNA molecules rather than
  proteins RNA other than mRNA (ex.XIST)
• RNAi - RNA interference
• siRNA- active molecules in RNA interference
  degrades mRNA (act where they originate)
• miRNAs - tiny 2124-nucleotide RNAs probably
  acting as translational regulators of
  protein-coding mRNAs (regulate elsewhere)

6
New Roles of RNA

• stRNA - Small temporal RNA (ex. lin-4 and let-7
  in Caenorhabditis elegans
• snRNA - Small nuclear RNA includes spliceosomal
  RNAs
• snoRNA - Small nucleolar RNA most known snoRNAs
  are involved in rRNA modification
• RNA world - RNA as catalyst

7
The Panel

• Michael McManus (Sharp Lab, MIT)
• the RNA world
• John Doench (Sharp Lab, MIT)
• story behind discovery of RNAi
• Herve Vauchere (Bartel Lab, WI)
• how RNA silencing is used by plants to thwart RNA
  viruses