This chapter considers the complexities of chromatin modifications and epigenetics, the regulation of transcription, and cotranscriptional and post-transcriptional processes. It reviews some of the topical areas of RNA biology. It begins by describing the explosion of transcriptomics data and the opportunities and challenges that this brings. It also looks at the growing prominence of non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) and describes the use of CRISPR, an RNA-guided genome editing system that will revolutionize both basic and applied research. The chapter discusses transcriptome sequences that are derived from copying RNA sequences into cDNA using reverse transcriptase, followed by sequencing. It mentions the advent of next-generation sequencing (NGS), which is known as a key technological development.
Chapter
RNA biology: future perspectives
Book
David Elliott and Michael Ladomery
Molecular Biology of RNA provides an overview of a cutting-edge field of biology. It starts with an introduction to the subject. It looks at how RNA can form versatile structures. It moves on to consider catalytic RNAs. Other topics covered include pre-mRNA splicing by the spliceosome, the RNA-binding proteins, pre-mRNA splicing defects found in development and disease, and co-transcriptional pre-mRNA processing. The text also looks at nucleocytoplasmic traffic of messenger RNA, messenger RNA localization, and translation of messenger RNA. It also examines stability and degradation of mRNA and RNA editing. Finally, the text provides an analysis on biogenesis and nucleocytoplasmic traffic of non-coding RNAs; the 'macro' RNAs, which include long non-coding RNAs and epigenetics; and the short non-coding RNAs and gene silencing. The text ends with a quick look at future perspectives.
