Johns Hopkins scientists believe they may have figured out how genetic snippets called microRNAs are able to shut down the production of some proteins.
The issue, they say, is important because the more scientists know about how genes — the blueprints for proteins — are regulated, the more likely they are to figure out how to use that information in treating or preventing diseases linked to such regulation, including cancer.
In both computer and test-tube studies using fruit-fly protein, the Johns Hopkins researchers intensively studied a fairly large protein called Argonaute because it is known to bind to microRNA and ultimately shut down protein production.
"The question was how it did it," says Rachel Green, Ph.D., a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and professor of molecular biology and genetics in the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
Previous studies have been inconclusive about the mechanism by which microRNAs bound to Argonautes prevent the production of protein from a given gene.
In this study, the team discovered that when an Argonaute binds to a microRNA, it then binds more tightly to a messenger RNA thereby sequestering the message from the translation machine known as the ribosome where protein production happens.
Their research appeared in January in Nature Structural & Molecular Biology.
The team set out to characterize Argonautes first using computers to compare their shapes and structures with other proteins. They found striking similarities between Argonaute structures and proteins that happened to exhibit a particular kind of "cooperative binding" known as allostery.
Allostery is a condition in which the binding of one molecule stimulates the binding of a second.