Abortive RNAs - What good are they?

 

Dear All,

 

Since that last Gene regulation lecture of Dr.Sharma, I have been wondering what good are these large number of small RNA products called Abortive RNAs that are formed after successive rounds of Abortive transcriptions. This query became all the more imperative when I found out a paper which reported that in vaccinia virus the short transcripts i.e. Abortive RNAs are capped (initiated with both ATP and GTP), methylated, and polyadenylylated, indicating that neither completion of an RNA chain nor processing from a polycistronic precursor was required for modification of either end of the RNA (J Virol. 1979 September; 31(3): 849-853). I couldn't find similar studies in higher systems but probably such modifications do occur in these systems.

 

In such a case, one wonders that why would cells "waste" so much of their energy & resources? Apparently they don't. A 1997 PNAS paper reports a novel mechanism in which  these abortive RNAs play a major role in 3' end repair of short, single stranded 3' ends of turnip crinkle carmovirus RNA which is vulnerable to degradation by host cell RNAses (PNAS, 94, Feb 1997, 1113–18).   

 

I wonder if they have regulatory roles? Do they regulate expression of same genes by RNAi which codes for them in a way miRNAs work? Perhaps only time will tell! Kindly feel free to enlighten me on this.

 

Kind Regards,

Tarun Gupta 

--
MSc Human Genomics
National Centre for Human Genome Studies and Research  
Panjab University
Chandigarh-India

Appeal: Let's not make information inaccessible to masses; Let's publish in Open Access Journals!

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