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Biochemistry

The big catch

Nature volume 447, pages 156–157 (2007)Cite this article

The availability of short interfering RNAs (siRNAs) to silence gene expression has revolutionized research in molecular cell biology. But these synthetic siRNAs rely on cellular enzymes for their activity.

One classic biochemistry approach involves fishing for an enzyme in a complex mixture of proteins, where the biochemist's rod is the technique of column chromatography. Using an elegant chromatographic purification strategy, Weitzer and Martinez1 (page 222 of this issue) report catching an enzyme from human cell extract that adds a phosphate group to the 5′ end of an RNA molecule. The 'fish' turns out to be human Clp1 (hClp1), which has roles in the process of RNA interference (RNAi), in the splicing — or processing — of transfer RNAs (tRNAs), and in the formation of 3′ ends of messenger RNAs.

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Figure 1: hClp1 and RNA metabolism.

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  1. Christopher R. Trotta is at PTC Therapeutics, 100 Corporate Court, South Plainfield, New Jersey 07080, USA. ctrotta@ptcbio.com,

    Christopher R. Trotta

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  1. Christopher R. Trotta
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Trotta, C. The big catch. Nature 447, 156–157 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/447156a

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