Re: GENOMES: Human gene number revised down

From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Fri Jun 06 2003 - 17:23:27 MDT

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    On Fri, 6 Jun 2003, Michael M. Butler wrote:

    > "I am only an egg." By "alternate splicing", do you mean anything like RNA
    > autoenzymatic activity?

    No, I believe there is an explicit "splicosome" to regulate how
    the exons in DNA are explicitly put together. I believe that most of
    this requires proteins (not RNA) to splice the exons. On top of that
    there may either be cell specific or even multiple cell specific machines
    that do the work. (E.g. "I splice this and you splice that...")

    These may of course contain some RNA enzymatic activity -- that isn't clear
    to at least to myself at this point. It would appear there is a lot of "mix and
    match" with regard to specific exons in specific tissues to generate specific
    functions. If one has 20,000+ genes generating at least 3 forms
    of proteins in a variety of 300+ different cell types it is going to be a
    nightmare to unravel. We will do it -- but there will be researcher blood on
    the floor in the process.

    I would not be surprised if there is a mix of "ancient" (RNA-based) processing
    functions combined with more modern (protein-based) processing functions
    to manage to pull this all off -- e.g. "its stranger than we can imagine".

    Robert



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