An Expanding Universe of Noncoding RNAs
Abstract
Noncoding RNAs (ncRNAs) have been found to have roles in a great variety of processes, including transcriptional regulation, chromosome replication, RNA processing and modification, messenger RNA stability and translation, and even protein degradation and translocation. Recent studies indicate that ncRNAs are far more abundant and important than initially imagined. These findings raise several fundamental questions: How many ncRNAs are encoded by a genome? Given the absence of a diagnostic open reading frame, how can these genes be identified? How can all the functions of ncRNAs be elucidated?
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I thank S. Altuvia, J. Brosius, S. Gottesman, K. M. Wassarman, and A. Zhang for helpful discussions and comments on the manuscript. I also thank them and many other investigators for extensive discussion of the nomenclature.
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Science
Volume 296 | Issue 5571
17 May 2002
17 May 2002
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Published in print: 17 May 2002
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- Gisela Storz
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