Researchers have shown that they can effectively tackle HIV-1 with small bits of gene-silencing RNA by delivering them directly to infected T cells, the major targets of the virus.

Some bacterial cells can swim, morph into new forms and even become dangerously virulent - all without initial involvement of DNA. Yale University researchers describe Friday in the journal Science how bacteria accomplish this amazing feat - and in doing so provide a glimpse of what the earliest forms of life on Earth may have looked like.

The Stowers Institute’s Shilatifard Lab has identified a new role for the elongation factor ELL in gene transcription by RNA polymerase II (Pol II) — the enzyme that synthesizes messenger RNA to carry genetic information from DNA to the protein-synthesizing machinery of the cell.

A new study shows that microinjection of RNA molecules into mouse embryos induces a hereditary form of cardiac hypertrophy that is similar to human hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM).

Expanding on prior research performed at the University of Pennsylvania, Penn biologists have determined that faulty RNA, the blueprint that creates mutated, toxic proteins, contributes to a family of neurodegenerative disorders in humans.

RNA is best known as a working copy of the DNA sequence of genes. In this role, it’s a carrier of the genes’ instructions to the cell, which manufactures proteins according to information in the RNA molecule.

Small non-coding RNAs have garnered significant interest for their ability to regulate gene expression. Two papers published by Genome Research have utilized the platypus genome sequence to investigate the conservation of small RNAs and associated functional pathways in the mammalian lineage.

Recent research that links specific pieces of RNA to an infectious organism’s duplication and spread could lead the way to the prevention of viroids, pathogens that can kill or damage food crops and other plants.

Recent research at Yale provided a glimpse of the ancient mechanism that helped diversify our genomes; it illuminated a relationship between gene processing in humans and the most primitive organisms by creating the first crystal structure of a crucial self-splicing region of RNA.

A team led by a Purdue University researcher has achieved images of a virus in detail two times greater than had previously been achieved.

Every minute, 30,000 of our outermost skin cells die so that we can live. When they do, new cells migrate from the inner layer of the skin to the surface of it, where they form a tough protective barrier.

RNA interference (RNAi) represents an innovative new strategy for using small RNA molecules to silence specific genes associated with disease processes, and a series of review articles describing the state-of-the-art and potential therapeutic applications of RNAi and microRNAs will begin with two review papers in the January 2008 issue of Human Gene Therapy, a peer-reviewed journal published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. The papers are available free online.