Center for RNA Molecular Biology, Department of Biochemistry, Case Western Reserve University, School of Medicine, 10900 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio 44106, USA.
Nature. 2010 Jan 28;463(7280):457-63. doi: 10.1038/nature08909.
The collection of components required to carry out the intricate processes involved in generating and maintaining a living, breathing and, sometimes, thinking organism is staggeringly complex. Where do all of the parts come from? Early estimates stated that about 100,000 genes would be required to make up a mammal; however, the actual number is less than one-quarter of that, barely four times the number of genes in budding yeast. It is now clear that the 'missing' information is in large part provided by alternative splicing, the process by which multiple different functional messenger RNAs, and therefore proteins, can be synthesized from a single gene.
要完成生成和维持一个有生命、有呼吸、有时甚至有思想的生物体所需的复杂过程,所需的组件的集合是惊人地复杂。所有这些部分都从哪里来?早期的估计表明,制造一个哺乳动物大约需要 10 万个基因;然而,实际数量还不到这个数字的四分之一,仅仅是出芽酵母基因数量的四倍。现在很清楚,“缺失”的信息在很大程度上是由选择性剪接提供的,这是一个过程,通过这个过程,一个基因可以合成多个不同功能的信使 RNA,因此可以合成多种不同的蛋白质。