Related papers: On an RNA-membrane protogenome
MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are endogenous 22-nucleotide RNAs, which suppress gene expression by selectively binding to the 3-noncoding region of specific message RNAs through base-pairing. Given the diversity and abundance of miRNA targets, miRNAs…
RNA molecules follow a succession of enzyme-mediated processing steps from transcription until maturation. The participating enzymes, for example the spliceosome for mRNAs and Drosha and Dicer for microRNAs, are also produced in the cell…
The kinetic folding of RNA sequences into secondary structures is modeled as a complex adaptive system, the components of which are possible RNA structural rearrangements (SRs) and their associated bases and base pairs. RNA bases and base…
The adhesion of biomembranes is mediated by the binding of membrane-anchored receptor and ligand proteins. The proteins can only bind if the separation between apposing membranes is sufficiently close to the length of the protein complexes,…
It is conceivable that an RNA virus could use a polysome, that is, a string of ribosomes covering the RNA strand, to protect the genetic material from degradation inside a host cell. This paper discusses how such a virus might operate, and…
Ribonucleic Acid (RNA) can fold into shapes that perform functions in the cell. These foldings are governed by Watson-Crick base pairing, namely Adenine to Uracil and Cytosine to Guanine (A-U and G-C). The properties of the H-P…
Enhanced dynamical fluctuations of RNAs, facilitated by a network of water molecules with strong interactions with RNA, are suspected to be critical in their ability to respond to a variety of cellular signals. Using atomically detailed…
The adhesion of biological membranes is controlled by various types of receptor and ligand molecules. In this letter, we present a statistical-mechanical model for membranes that interact via receptor/ligand bonds of two different lengths.…
Non-coding RNA sequences play a great role in controlling a number of cellular functions, thus raising the need to understand their complex conformational dynamics in quantitative detail. In this perspective, we first show that single…
Background: The evolution of microRNA regulation in metazoans is a mysterious process: MicroRNA sequences are highly conserved among distal organisms, but on the other hand, there is no evident conservation of their targets. Results: We…
We present a novel buckling instability relevant to membrane budding in eukaryotic cells. In this mechanism, curved filaments bind to a lipid bilayer without changing its intrinsic curvature. As more and more filaments adsorb, newly added…
Recently, microRNAs (miRNAs) have emerged as central posttranscriptional regulators of gene expression. miRNAs regulate many key biological processes, including cell growth, death, development and differentiation. This discovery is…
Translation is an important process for prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells to produce necessary proteins for cell growth. Numerious experiments have been performed to explore the translational properties. Diverse models have also been…
X-ray data indicate that complexes of ribosomes with cognate and near cognate tRNAs are very similar structurally, and this was the ground for a suggestion that the ribosome discriminates correct codon-anticodon pair because of its higher…
microRNAs (miRNAs) regulate gene expression at post-transcriptional level by repressing target RNA molecules. Competition to bind miRNAs tends in turn to correlate their targets, establishing effective RNA-RNA interactions that can…
Membranes are ubiquitous in nature with primary functions that include adaptive filtering and selective transport of chemical and molecular species. Being critical to cellular functions, they are also fundamental in many areas of science…
MicroRNAs (miRNAs) critically modulate stem cell properties like pluripotency, but the fundamental mechanism remains largely unknown. This study systematically analyzes multiple-omics data and builds a systems physical network including…
Non-coding RNAs are ubiquitous, but the discovery of new RNA gene sequences far outpaces research on their structure and functional interactions. We mine the evolutionary sequence record to derive precise information about function and…
RNA protein interactions control the fate of cellular RNAs and play an important role in gene regulation. An interdependency between such interactions allows for the implementation of logic functions in gene regulation. We investigate the…
Understanding the patterns and causes of phenotypic divergence is a central goal in evolutionary biology. Much work has shown that mRNA abundance is highly variable between closely related species. However, the extent and mechanisms of…