Evidence of altered RNA stirs debate

摘要

A funny thing happened on the way to the ribosome. That's the essence of a controversial paper concluding that messenger RNA - the molecular middleman that carries information from a cell's DNA to its protein-making machinery - is routinely and systematically altered by unknown mechanisms before its genetic instructions can be read. The paper, published in Science last week (M. Li et al. Science doi:10.1126/science.l207018;2011),is already drawing pointed reviews from computational biologists, who cite possible flaws that could undermine the authors' claims.