Plant study reveals a “deeply hidden” layer of transcriptome regulation.
“Cells keep a close watch over the transcriptome – all parts of the genome that are expressed in any given cell at any given time.
Before RNA transcripts can guide protein synthesis or take on regulatory functions, they have to undergo a strict mRNA surveillance system that degrades defective, obsolete, and surplus transcripts.
By stopping the function of the exosome, a multi-unit complex molecular machine in charge of controlled RNA degradation, researchers found evidence for widespread exosome-mediated RNA quality control in plants and a ‘deeply hidden’ layer of the transcriptome that is tightly regulated by exosome activity.
The common notion was that the exosome plays a central role in bulk RNA turnover so they expected to find the levels of all transcripts increasing when they inactivated the exosome complex. Instead the exosome mechanism seems to be very tightly regulating an already very specific group of transcripts.”
It is wonderous in the extreme to find the exosome “a multi-unit complex molecular machine” but there is also some separate information and control mechanism using the exosome to be “in charge of controlled RNA degradation”. These multiple layers of design and control engineering are clearly outside the ability of RM and NS to create.