Immune complexity: gene expression highly regulated (Introduction)

by David Turell , Saturday, February 06, 2021, 01:24 (1170 days ago) @ David Turell

It controls how information is expressed:

https://phys.org/news/2021-02-core-complex.html

"Gene expression is a highly regulated process that involves several steps. These include transcription of DNA instructions into RNA, removal of non-coding segments from the RNA message, and its subsequent translation into proteins. All these steps involve specific molecular machineries responsible for conducting each process with high accuracy.

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"During transcription, genetic information contained in the DNA is used to create a precursor messenger RNA (pre-mRNA) thanks to the action of an enzyme, RNA Polymerase II. To maintain only the necessary coding segments required to produce a protein, short fragments of the pre-mRNA are kept and others are removed . This process is known as pre-mRNA splicing and is catalyzed by a large and dynamic RNA-protein complex, the spliceosome.

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"More than 100 proteins and five small nuclear RNAs (snRNAs) are involved in building the spliceosome complex and orchestrating pre-mRNA splicing. Before the snRNAs can be incorporated into the spliceosome, they need to undergo an endonucleolytic processing step (in other words, a process where an enzyme has to cut the RNA, also called 3'-end processing), which is catalyzed by the Integrator complex. Discovered fifteen years ago, Integrator remained largely uncharacterised structurally, which triggered the Galej group's interest.

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"Recent investigation has revealed that the Integrator complex is broadly involved in the transcription attenuation process, meaning that it can make sure some genes are not expressed. Playing such an essential role in the regulation of gene expression gives even more reason to have a closer look at its molecular structure.

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"Interestingly, Integrator has some similarities with other cellular machineries involved in the 3'-end processing of the messenger RNAs that encode proteins. However, the inner arrangement of the Integrator proteins is quite unique compared with the other 3'-end processing complexes, and some proteins are twisted in their positions. This peculiar architecture could have played an important role in the specialization of this complex, which evolved to fulfill different functions."

Comment: Such a complex arrangement of proteins, some twisted is a highly organized design, is never by chance. Designer required