Researchers at the School of Medicine made a new technique to precisely identify DNA sequences and locations bound by regulatory ribonucleic acids (RNAs), according to a School of Medicine statement. With this new information, researchers in these fields will now be able to understand how RNA regulates the expression of genes.
Earlier techniques only allowed researchers to guess the activity of the RNA based on clues from the surrounding biological system, according to dermatology professor and researcher Howard Chang. This new technique, however, allows scientists to identify exactly where on the chromatin the RNAs are binding. The results, Chang said in the study, indicate that the regulatory RNA is “focal, numerous and site-specific.”
Messenger RNA, which transcribes genetic instructions encoded in DNA and facilitates protein-building using that information, was identified 50 years ago. In the years since, the one-directional flow of information from DNA to RNA to protein became central to biology curricula. Regulatory RNA, however, contradicts that simplified picture because it binds to DNA and affects which genes are selected to become proteins.
Studying the role of regulatory RNA may lead to a better understanding of several cellular functions, influencing our understanding of cell development and regeneration and cancer.
Chang and his lab identified some of the first known regulatory RNAs, also referred to as long intergenic non-coding RNAs, or lincRNAs.
Chang was senior author of the work published in September, while graduate student Ci Chu was first author.
Chu and Chang innovated a “tiling” approach using dozens of individually labeled nucleotide sequences to isolate the small portion of regulatory RNAs, or lincRNAs, that remains bound to chromatin.
The research was funded by the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the National Institutes of Health, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Agency for Science, Technology and Research of Singapore.
– Ivy Nguyen and Margaret Rawson