RNA project update

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RNA project to create language for scientists worldwide

22 Mar 2005 Medical News Today

Research into ribonucleic acids (RNA)-the building blocks of life-is exploding

as scientists worldwide discover the roles of RNA in genetics, health, disease

and the development of organisms. The rapidly growing body of knowledge has

created the need for researchers to develop a shared vocabulary and system for

describing, cataloging and comparing their findings.

An international team of RNA scientists, known as the RNA Ontology Consortium,

has now been formed to do just that.

“The consortium will develop a common vocabulary and scientific concepts

relating RNA structure and function to allow RNA scientists worldwide to

communicate with one another as well as to integrate different kinds of

information they obtain about RNA molecules,” explained Dr. Neocles Leontis, a

Bowling Green State University chemistry professor chosen by the RNA Society to

head the consortium.

“This,” he added, “will make it easier to turn molecular information into useful

knowledge that can help us to understand how different cells grow and develop as

they do. This knowledge is key to curing hereditary diseases.”

The National Science Foundation is providing $500,000 for the five-year project

as one of its Research Coordination Networks, whose goals are to “encourage and

foster interaction among scientists” and to facilitate “innovative ideas for

implementing novel networking strategies.”

As principal investigator, Leontis will serve as coordinator of the consortium,

which includes scientists from the United States, Great Britain, France, Canada

and Australia. Participating are leading researchers from Stanford, Duke, Yale,

Rutgers and Georgia Tech universities, the University of California-Berkeley,

the University of North Carolina, the University of Rochester, the University of

Montréal, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the Institut de Biologie

Moléculaire et Cellulaire in France, and the Scripps Research Institute.

Creating the RNA Ontology will require incorporating the methods and

vocabularies of chemists, molecular biologists, genomicists, information

scientists and structural biologists. To help sort out the difficult conceptual

issues, the consortium will organize frequent face-to-face meetings of RNA

scientists. Members will also report their progress at the annual RNA Society

meetings and receive feedback from the wider community of researchers.

The ontology team will identify all RNA motifs, or repeated patterns, mentioned

in the literature or appearing in databases, to agree upon and write a

definition for each motif. The consortium's work will be accessible on the Web

to the various RNA research communities using servers hosted at BGSU.

Some researchers focus on the sequences of RNA molecules, while others study

their 3-dimensional structures. A major focus of the project will be to

integrate the databases of RNA sequences and 3D structure.

Leontis has experience in both areas. An affiliate of the BGSU Center for

Biomolecular Sciences and the Northwest Ohio Bioinformatics Consortium, he is

known internationally for his work on RNA structural bioinformatics--the field

of science in which biology, computer science and information technology merge.

Methods he has developed for analyzing and classifying RNA structures have been

adopted internationally to advance RNA structure prediction and simulation and

RNA sequence analysis. His work is supported by the National Institutes for

Health and the American Chemical Society.

Leontis describes RNA molecules as “the software controlling how the genes are

expressed to make proteins.” They are unique in being able to store and transmit

information as well as process that information.

The continuous discovery of new RNA molecules with novel biological functions is

beginning to show that RNA plays far more roles than originally believed. For

instance, while genomicists had previously determined that humans and

chimpanzees share 99 percent of the same protein genes, it has now been

discovered in the past two years that so do mice.

“The hardware (proteins) for mice and humans is practically the same-but clearly

mice and humans are different. Since the hardware is the same, the difference

between mice and humans must be at the software level-which determines how the

hardware is used. We are beginning to see that RNA is that software,” Leontis

said.

The possible applications of newly generated knowledge about RNA are vast. RNA

science already is playing an important role in understanding normal and

abnormal metabolism and physiology and in designing new strategies for

intervention in the form of gene therapy, Leontis said.