RNA-associated introns guide nerve-cell channel production

BIOLOGY CLASS & ANATOMY CLASS
Here's an article that demonstrates the application of what we learned in class to medical conditions.

Biology class - Introns, those short segments of mRNA that cells remove (splice) from the molecule before moving into the cytoplasm because they do not code for any amino acids , or so we thought. Apparently "junk DNA" is not as useless as scientists thought, just like I said in class. ;-)

It seems on some cells (brain cells in this case) they DO have a function and the cells know when to retain them instead of "deleting" those nucleotides. Read the article and lets see if you can explain their function.

Anatomy class - We just finished discussing the nervous system. You learned (I hope!) that besides neurons we can find other types of cells (neuroglia) that work together to keep this system running smoothly. Based on the article and since you already took Biology and understand what introns and channel proteins are; What's the connection between these proteins and maintaining neuronal communication with the presence or absence of introns in these cells?

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have discovered that introns, or junk DNA to some, associated with RNA are an important molecular guide to making nerve-cell electrical channels. Senior author James Eberwine, PhD, Elmer Bobst Professor of Pharmacology, and lead authors Kevin Miyashiro, and Thomas J. Bell, PhD, both in Eberwine’s lab, report their findings in this week's early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In nerve cells, some ion channels are located in the dendrite, which branch from the cell body of the neuron. Dendrites detect the electrical and chemical signals transmitted to the neuron by the axons of other neurons. Abnormalities in the dendrite electrical channel are involved in epilepsy, neurodegenerative diseases, and cognitive disorders, among others. more

Source: Biology News Net

Johns Hopkins researcher leads international effort to create 'proteinpedia'

BIOLOGY CLASS
How many of you use wikipedia to find the answer to different questions?...well, me too. Now think of this, a wiki that specializes only on what we are currently discussing in class; proteins. Yes, those molecules with their distinctive shapes that determine our phenotype.

Researchers at JHU came up with the idea of creating this online service for research labs working on proteonics and molecular biology to share all their findings and making them accessible to other labs and the public. What's great about the site is the fact that the data published is based on results of actual experiments and not models or predictions. Just like the Human Genome Project, decoding and understanding the proteins synthesized by organisms can be a daunting task, projects like these, the HUMAN PROTEINPEDIA, will help speed up the process of disseminating all this information.

Based on what we have discussed in class in terms of understanding what DNA and proteins are and how they work, which is more useful, let's say, for the field of medicine. Are they both equally important, or maybe one can help medicine more that the other. Let me know what do you think.

A researcher at the Johns Hopkins Institute of Genetic Medicine has led the effort to compile to date the largest free resource of experimental information about human proteins. Reporting in the February issue of Nature Biotechnology, the research team describes how all researchers around the world can access this data and speed their own research.

“Advances in technology have made data generation much easier, but processing it and interpreting observations are now the major hurdles in science today,” says Akhilesh Pandey, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of biological chemistry, pathology and oncology and member of the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine at Hopkins. more

Source: Biology News Net