魷魚能以前所未有的方式編輯它們的RNA

科學家發(fā)現(xiàn)，魷魚能以前所未有的方式編輯它們的RNA

When it comes to squids, you just can't keep them down.

當談到魷魚時，你就是無法控制它們。

Not just because they're slippery, but also because they have an incredible genetic editing ability - it lets them tweak their own RNA long after it's left the nucleus.

不僅因為它們很滑，還因為它們有一種令人難以置信的基因編輯能力——這讓它們能夠在RNA離開細胞核很長時間后對其進行調(diào)整。

Here's what that means. Genes, in humans at least, mostly stay unchanging until they're recombined and passed onto the next generation.

這是什么意思呢?基因，至少在人類身上，在重組并傳遞給下一代之前，基本上保持不變。

This is the same for our messenger RNA (mRNA). Helpful molecules read our DNA, create short little RNA messages, and send them outside the nucleus to tell the rest of the cell which proteins need to be built.

我們的信使RNA (mRNA)也是如此。有用的分子讀取我們的DNA，生成簡短的RNA信息，然后將它們發(fā)送到細胞核外，告訴細胞的其他部分哪些蛋白質需要合成。

Once that mRNA has exited the nucleus, it's thought the genetic information it carries can't be messed with much - but new research has shown that in squid nerves, this isn't the case.

一旦信使rna離開細胞核，它所攜帶的遺傳信息就不會被擾亂了——但新的研究表明，在魷魚神經(jīng)中，情況并非如此。

"We are showing that squid can modify the RNAs out in the periphery of the cell," says Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), Woods Hole geneticist Joshua Rosenthal.

伍茲霍爾遺傳學家喬舒亞·羅森塔爾(Joshua Rosenthal)海洋生物實驗室(MBL)說：“我們正在證明，魷魚可以改變細胞外圍的RNA。”

"It works by this massive tweaking of its nervous system," Rosenthal told Wired. "Which is a really novel way of going through life."

羅森塔爾告訴《連線》雜志：“它的工作原理是對神經(jīng)系統(tǒng)進行大規(guī)模的調(diào)整。這是一種非常新穎的生活方式。”

The team took nerves from specimens of adult male longfin inshore squid (Doryteuthis pealeii), and analysed the protein expression, as well as the squids' transcriptome, which is similar to a genome, but for mRNA.

研究小組從成年雄性長鰭近海魷魚(Doryteuthis pealei)的標本中提取神經(jīng)，并分析了蛋白質的表達，以及魷魚的轉錄組，該轉錄組類似于一個基因組，但有mRNA。

They found that in squid nerves (or neurons), the mRNA was being edited outside of the nucleus, in a part of the cell called the axon.

他們發(fā)現(xiàn)，在魷魚神經(jīng)(或神經(jīng)元)中，mRNA在細胞核外的軸突細胞中被編輯。

This mRNA editing allows the squids to finely tune the proteins they produce at local sites (see diagram below). With this finding, squids have become the only creatures we know of that can do this.

這種mRNA編輯允許魷魚微調(diào)它們在局部產(chǎn)生的蛋白質(見下圖)。有了這個發(fā)現(xiàn)，魷魚已經(jīng)成為我們所知的唯一能做到這一點的生物。

This isn't the first time squids have shown off their genetic editing prowess, though. Back in 2015, a similar team at MBL discovered that squids edit their mRNA inside their nucleus to an incredibly large degree – orders of magnitude more than what happens in humans.

不過，這并不是魷魚第一次展示它們的基因編輯能力。早在2015年，MBL的一個類似團隊就發(fā)現(xiàn)，魷魚在細胞核內(nèi)的mRNA編輯程度之大令人難以置信——比人類的編輯程度高幾個數(shù)量級。

The research has been published in Nucleic Acids Research.

這項研究已發(fā)表在《核酸研究》雜志上。