Spying on a cellular director in the cutting room
Sunday, March 21, 2010 - 23:35
in Physics & Chemistry
Like a film director cutting out extraneous footage to create a blockbuster, the cellular machine called the spliceosome snips out unwanted stretches of genetic material and joins the remaining pieces to fashion a template for protein production. But more than box office revenues are at stake: if the spliceosome makes a careless cut, disease likely results. Researchers have now managed to spy on the splicing process in single molecules.