{"id":5698,"date":"2015-03-16T11:07:22","date_gmt":"2015-03-16T19:07:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=5698"},"modified":"2015-03-17T09:57:19","modified_gmt":"2015-03-17T17:57:19","slug":"the-gene-genies-part-1-the-squids-of-lamarck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=5698","title":{"rendered":"The Gene Genies, Part 1: The Squids of Lamarck."},"content":{"rendered":"

You know the drill. DNA holds the source code; RNA carries it to the ribosomes; ribosomes build stuff for the cell. Of course, the details of cellular operation are a million times more intricate than this\u2014 some RNA acts not to courier code but to switch genes on and off, for example\u2014 but it’s this venerable three-step that puts the tinkertoys together.<\/p>\n

Now. If a sufficiently unscrupulous RNA molecule had an agenda at odds with the wishes of Daddy DNA, it could do a fair bit of damage. Change an instruction or two while on the road, enlist some hitchhiking enzyme into provoking a frame-shift or a faux-point-mutation. The nucleus mails off an order for Game of Thrones<\/em> and the ribosome receives one for Spongebob Squarepants<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"Who<\/a>

Who needs gamma rays? This guy hacks his own<\/i> DNA. (Photo Brandi Noble, NOAA)<\/p><\/div>\n

The term is RNA editing<\/em><\/a> and it occupies center stage in this recent paper on cephalopod genetics<\/a>. RNA editing is generally a very rare event. This makes it all the more remarkable that Alon et al<\/em> report over 57,000<\/em> recoding sites for the Longfin Inshore Squid\u2014 an order of magnitude higher than reported for any other species. Even cooller, all these hijacked codes seem to be involved in building the nervous system. (“Synaptic vesicle cycle”, “axon guidance”, “actin cytoskeleton”, and “Circadian rhythm” are all processes listed as massively rewritten downstream of the DNA.)<\/p>\n

\"This<\/a>

This is part of a squid synapse. Red and yellow bits are subject to change without notice. (from Alon et al<\/i>.)<\/p><\/div>\n

It’s right there in the title: The Majority of Transcripts in the Squid Nervous System are Extensively Recoded. <\/em>As the authors point out, this necessitates a major rethink of the whole squidly evolutionary process. But there are applications beyond such obvious intrinsic biological interest.<\/p>\n

If I was interested in rebuilding a cephalopod to my own ends\u2014 perhaps adding organic tasers<\/a>, or extra eye-sockets repurposed as oceanographic sensors (imagine luciferin fluorescence as an indicator of dissolved O2<\/sub>, which trigger photopigments in a modified retina, which in turn send that data back to a central nervous system via an extra optic nerve!)\u2014<\/p>\n

Well, let’s just say that a squid who comes pre-equipped with its own set of downstream editing enzymes, targeted to major CNS functions, might come in really<\/em> handy.<\/p>\n

(Coming up in Part 2: Selection-resistant genes. What could possibly go wrong?)<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You know the drill. DNA holds the source code; RNA carries it to the ribosomes; ribosomes build stuff for the cell. Of course, the details of cellular operation are a million times more intricate than this\u2014 some RNA acts not to courier code but to switch genes on and off, for example\u2014 but it’s this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,4,50,22,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech","category-evolution","category-intelligent-design-the-novel","category-marine","category-neuro"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5698"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5698\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5710,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5698\/revisions\/5710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}