Nobel Prize time

So its that time of year, when the Nobel Prizes are announced. Although there is no Nobel for the field sciences, we will still post a bit about them, because well it is interesting. That simple.

First up is the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine which went to two US scientists, Andrew Z. Fire and Craig C. Mello for their work looking at how some genes are regulated in the body. They discovered RNA interference which is responsible for down-regulation of certain genes. It has also become a very important tool for scientists studying certain proteins. The technique pioneered by the Nobel laureates allows one to artificially "knock-down" a gene and study how the protein of interest effects the cell or animal model by making observations in its absence.

We use this very new technique in my lab and it is instrumental in understanding the effects of proteins in cell and tissue physiology.

DNA holds the information needed to build all the proteins that make life possible. The information in a gene is first copied into a molecule known as mRNA (messenger RNA), which is then used as a template for making a protein (get a genetics overview.)

But unlike DNA, which generally exists only as a double-stranded molecule with two matching sides, mRNA is single-stranded.

Fire and Mello found that injecting a cell with the matching strand for a certain mRNA silences all expression of the associated gene—the protein is simply not made. The scientists reported their discoveries in a 1998 issue of the journal Nature.

The matching strand binds to the target RNA to create a double-stranded RNA molecule, similar to DNA.

This double-stranded RNA, scientists later discovered, is destroyed by a set of proteins as a natural defense mechanism against viruses, as well as a tool to regulate the expression of certain genes.

Photo via Creative Commons Search, credit ereneta