RNA plays a critical role in directing the creation of proteins, but there is more to the life of an RNA molecule than simply carrying DNA's message. Researchers at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT have developed an approach that offers many windows into the lifecycle of these essential molecules and will enable other scientists to investigate what happens when something in a cell goes wrong. "People are discovering more and more how the RNA lifecycle is at the heart of problems we see in disease, but we actually understand a lot less about it than we understand about many other cellular processes," said Aviv Regev, a core faculty member of the Broad Institute and a co-senior author on the paper.
Regev and her colleagues have developed a method that allows them to tease apart the different stages of this lifecycle by measuring how much messenger RNA is produced and how much is degraded. The balance of these two processes contributes to the changes seen in RNA levels in a cell over time, much the way that birth and death rates contribute to a country's total population....
read more>>>....
