"We were interested in the basic question of how these introns insert themselves into different genes," Lambowitz explained. "We wanted to know where introns came from and how they move.
"This class of introns appears very primitive, as if they were the ancestors of introns found in higher organisms."
Lambowitz believes that the introns are "parasites" on the genome, and behave similar to the way retroviruses inhabit an organism. He suggested that retroviruses might even have evolved originally from these kinds of introns.
"Their (the introns') only function is to replicate themselves, but in that process, they fundamentally influence the nature of the gene structure," he said. Such changes can drastically change the function of a gene.
"These introns can move around from place to place on the gene and spread themselves by inserting into different genes. They do this naturally," Lambowitz said. "We were interested in the mechanism by which they do this." He said that the mechanism involves integration of the intron's RNA into the double-stranded DNA of the gene. The information in the RNA is eventually transferred into the DNA through this process.
"This is a really surprising find. No one suspected that they could use this mechanism."
In a few experiments so far, the researchers have been able to modify some of the information carried by the introns and transfer it to the genes at a very specific site. Much more work will be required before the process could be used for any therapeutic purposes, he said.
Lambowitz's team, along with researcher Phillip S. Perlman, a
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Contact: Alan Lambowitz
Lambowitz.1@osu.edu
614-292-5606
Ohio State University
4-Jun-1996