The 2006 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to the
discoverers of RNA interference, Andrew Fire and Craig Mello. This
prize, which follows "RNA" Nobels for splicing and RNA catalysis,
highlights just one class of recently discovered non-protein coding
RNAs. Remarkably, non-coding RNAs are thought to outnumber protein
coding genes in mammals by perhaps as much as four-fold. In fact, it
appears that the complexity of an organism correlates with the fraction
of its genome devoted to non-protein coding RNAs. Essential biological
processes as diverse as cell differentiation, suppression of infecting
viruses and parasitic tra- posons, higher-level organization of
eukaryotic chromosomes, and gene expression are found to be largely
directed by non-protein coding RNAs. Currently, bioinformatic,
high-throughput sequencing, and biochemical approaches are identifying
an increasing number of these RNAs. Unfortunately, our ability to
characterize the molecular details of these RNAs is significantly
lacking. The biophysical study of these RNAs is an emergent field that
is unraveling the molecular underpinnings of how RNA fulfills its
multitude of roles in sustaining cellular life. The resulting
understanding of the physical and chemical processes at the molecular
level is critical to our ability to harness RNA for use in biotechnology
and human therapy, a prospect that has recently spawned a multi-billion
dollar industry.
