CHAPEL HILL Biological chemists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill say a discovery they have made about how living organisms convert genetic instructions into action represents a fundamental advance in the understanding of the flow of genetic information.
The UNC scientists have found a previously unknown chemical site on a key enzyme that regulates production of the genetic messenger known as RNA. When the chemical site is occupied, it markedly speeds up the process by which the information contained in DNA, which serves as genetic blueprints, is converted into functions critical for maintaining life.
A report on the discovery appears in the July 27 issue of Cell, a scientific journal. Authors are Dr. Dorothy A. Erie, assistant professor of chemistry; Dr. J. Estelle Foster, a former student of Eries now at Eli Lilly and Company, the pharmaceutical manufacturer; and chemistry doctoral student Shannon F. Holmes.
The information for all the genes in an organism is contained in its DNA, which is like a very long book of instructions, Erie said. For this information to be translated into function, sections of the DNA must be copied into an RNA chain. The RNA is then translated into proteins that must carry out countless particular functions such as wound healing , which is at the end of a complicated cascade of events in the body.
Transcription is the process of making RNA chains from DNA, and RNA polymerase is the enzyme responsible for causing and controlling production of the RNA chain, she said. Eries laboratory investigates how the enzyme governing the first step in gene expression works.
Our recent studies have led to discovery of an additional site on RNA polymerase to which the precursor molecule can bind, the chemist said. The precursor molecules can be thought of as links in the growing RNA chain.
In a series of complicated experiments with the enzyme from the bacterium E. coli, she and her st
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Contact: David Williamson
david_williamson@unc.edu
919-962-8596
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
26-Jul-2001