Arizona State University scientists discover how junk RNA controls the activity of ordinary genes, writes the journal Nucleic Acids Research.
Experts have created a detailed map of the UTR regions of mRNA in the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans). UTR regions, or untranslated regions, are the ends of RNA molecules that do not contain information about the amino acid sequence of the protein, which is why they are traditionally classified as “junk”. However, noncoding and untranslated regions are known to regulate the translation process itself, i.e. protein synthesis based on the translated mRNA sequence.
The new map allows scientists to better understand how small non-coding RNA (snRNA) molecules interact with genes to control their activity, as well as study important regions of the 3'UTR that help with processing and regulation of RNA molecules. 3'UTR is the non-coding region of an mRNA located at its third end, immediately following the coding region.