Highly read on www.cell.com 20 Jul–19 Aug

Different types of RNA molecule can communicate with one another through RNA sequences called microRNA response elements (MREs).

The classical vision of RNA — as merely an intermediate between DNA and proteins — has been overturned by the discovery of many types of RNA that have functions other than protein-coding. One class of non-coding RNAs, the microRNAs, inhibits gene expression by binding to MREs and decreasing the stability of protein-coding messenger RNAs or limiting their translation into proteins.

But in an overview of recently published results, Pier Paolo Pandolfi of the Beth Israel Deaconess Cancer Center in Boston, Massachusetts, and his colleagues propose that coding and non-coding RNAs can compete for binding to microRNAs. This provides a mechanism by which MREs mediate communication, allowing different forms of RNA to 'talk' to each other and build large regulatory networks.

Cell 146, 353–358 (2011)