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Published online 4 December 2008 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2008.1277
News
Proteins that read DNA backwards
Some enzymes transcribe DNA in the 'wrong' direction to create puzzling RNAs.
Over the past decade, biologists have learned to credit RNA with more respect than it once garnered. Previously thought of simply as a chemical intermediate between DNA and protein, a host of RNA oddities that can switch genes off and on has revised that view.
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This is very interesting, but I find the article title and caption misleading. This is not about proteins that read DNA backwards. The polymerases still work from 5' to 3', but they read the strand other than the one encoding the gene being primarily transcribed. The findings published in Science are more detailed than previous reports, but anti-sense transcription has been known for a long time.
I agree, the Science articles that are being profiled are very interesting, but the title of this news article was completely inaccurate and misleading.
Is it possible that the "anti-sense" RNA is actually translated into a functional protein? Or could it be ribosomal RNA or transfer RNA? Regardless this is an intriguing article. I find it dissapointing however that the most accepted hypothesis at this time is that the whole process is a mistake; why not use DNA to code for a specific protein "forward" and another one "backward".
Agree with the previous views that the news title is totally wrong and misleading. I thought I was going to be able to tell my students about a reverse polarity RNA polymerase but alas not (bet they do exist though). Also agree with comment from Natalie Morris that antisense transription is very unlikely to be a "mistake"; nature always exploits what is on offer, adventitious or not. Kevin Lee