A team of University of Oregon biologists, using fruit flies, has created a way to isolate RNA from specific cells, opening a new window on how gene expression drives normal development and disease-causing breakdowns.

University of Nevada School of Medicine scientists in the Department of Physiology and Cell Biology have discovered insight into the reproductive workings of the male sex chromosome that may have significant implications for male infertility and contraception.

Now, a pair of Scripps Research Institute scientists has taken a significant step toward answering that question. The scientists have synthesized for the first time RNA enzymes that can replicate themselves without the help of any proteins or other cellular components, and the process proceeds indefinitely.

RE1-silencing transcription factor (REST) inhibits expression of neuronal genes in non-neural cells. Huntingtin sequesters REST in the cytoplasm of neurons, precluding transcriptional repression and allowing neuronal specification.

An international research team led by Tim Nilsen, Ph.D., a professor of medicine and biochemistry and the director of the School of Medicine's Center for RNA Molecular Biology, has discovered an unexpected mechanism governing alternative splicing, the process by which single genes produce different proteins in different situations.

The Stowers Institute’s Baumann Lab has discovered an important step in the maturation pathway of telomerase, the enzyme that replenishes the sequences that are lost at chromosome ends with every cell division. The findings were published today in the Advance Online Publication of Nature.

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.