Proofreading RNA
In the evolution of life on Earth, reverse transcriptase played a leading role. Its error-prone transcription of RNA to DNA generated biological diversity. It is still doing that work via retroviruses, but diseases, particularly cancers, can arise from transcription mistakes. To minimize these errors, biochemists at the University of Texas at Austin engineered a new DNA polymerase named “RTX” (for reverse transcriptase xenopolymerase, not to be confused with RTX toxic proteins) that performs high fidelity proofreading from RNA templates. “The significance of this,” as one of the biochemists asserts, “. . . is that we can now . . . copy large amounts of RNA information found in modern genomes, in the form of the RNA transcripts that encode almost every aspect of our physiology. This means that diagnoses made based on genomic information are far more likely to be accurate. ” MORE
Image Credit: Jared Ellefson, University of Texas at Austin and ScienceDaily.com