HONG KONG: Crack open any science textbook and it’ll tell you that DNA instruction is needed to create proteins. But a University of Utah-led team of researchers have discovered evidence suggesting otherwise.
Published Thursday in the journal Science, their findings show that it’s possible for amino acids (the building blocks of proteins) to be assembled without blueprints from DNA and messenger RNA (mRNA).
“This surprising discovery reflects how incomplete our understanding of biology is,” explained first author Peter Shen, a postdoctoral fellow in biochemistry at the University of Utah. “Nature is capable of more than we realize.”
To help explain the enormity of this discovery, the researchers compare a cell to a well-run factory and ribosomes to machines on an assembly line that makes proteins. They link together amino acids in a sequence specified by the genetic code, and when something goes wrong, the ribosome halts the process so that a “quality control team” can arrive on the scene.
In order to clean up the mess, the ribosome is disassembled, the blueprint is discarded and the incomplete protein winds up being recycled, the study authors explained. However, the study revealed that one member of this so-called quality control team, a protein known as Rqc2, has a somewhat surprising role in the protein-recycling process.
Before the unfinished protein is recycled, Rqc2 prompts the ribosomes to repeatedly add two of the 20 known amino acids, alanine and threonine, in an unspecified order. Continuing with the factory illustration, they compare the process to an assembly line that continues building despite not having instructions by putting random components together.
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