Today in Science: RNA may rule our genome

Science, insight, inspiration for all June 13, 2024: The human genome is mostly RNA, what ice bubbles reveal, and scientists make a single-atom layer of gold. —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor TODAY'S NEWS The world's first satellite made from wood, developed by scientists at Kyoto University and logging company Sumitomo Forestry, is shown during a press conference at Kyoto University in Kyoto on May 28, 2024. JiJi Press/AFP via Getty Images • Japanese researchers revealed the world's first wooden satellite, which will be less polluting than metal satellites. | 4 min read • A drug called donanemab won unanimous FDA approval to treat Alzheimer's, even though it shows only modest benefits. | 4 min read • This is what happens when a nuclear bomb goes off in space. | 5 min read • A single type of avian flu test exists, and it is only available to livestock workers. | 6 min read • Scientists have created freestanding, single-atom-thick sheets of gold and dubbed it "goldene." | 2 min read Amanda Montañez; Source: "Synthesis of Goldene Comprising Single-Atom Layer Gold," by Shun Kashiwaya et al., in Nature Synthesis. Published online April 16, 2024 (reference) More News TOP STORIES Bubble Up Bbubbles in ice cubes or glaciers usually form peculiar shapes–elongated teardrops or worm-like strands. Researchers have shown that ice bubbles' shapes can reveal how fast the water froze and how much gas was dissolved in it at the time of freezing. The details: Ice samples with many small, slightly elongated bubbles suggest a high freezing rate and a high gas concentration, whereas a sample with a few larger, longer pores froze more slowly. These conditions can be predicted with math. What the experts say: "We can match most bubbles with the same equation," says Virgile Thiévenaz, who studies fluid mechanics at Paris's Industrial Physics and Chemistry Higher Education Institute. If you know a sample's freezing rate, you can work out the gas concentration, and vice versa. According to the bubble equation, long, cylindrical ice-bubble "worms" will sometimes grow unchecked, weakening the surrounding structure of ice. Bubble patterns in Russia's Lake Baikal. Anton Petrus/Getty Images RNA Revolution The human genome has some 3 billion DNA building blocks. In the last decade or so, researchers have found more and more evidence indicating that about 75 percent of the genome is directing the production of RNA. Most of these are noncoding RNA sequences that don't make proteins (using DNA blueprints), but they interact with genes, turning them on and off and fine-tuning their activity–essentially controlling which proteins are made, and when. Noncoding RNA may also play a role in disease by regulating cell processes in some cancers, for example. What this means: Our traditional view of how the genome works–DNA to messenger RNA to protein–is likely too simplistic. For decades scientists have known that only 1 to 2 percent of the genome consisted of genes that coded for proteins–and they dismissed the rest as "junk DNA." But scientists have discovered many thousands of human noncoding RNAs so far in all that "junk," many with very specific functions. Now some experts suspect there may be more than 500,000 of these RNA molecules coded for in the genome. What the experts say: Noncoding RNAs could make excellent targets for drugs, especially the RNAs that control tumor growth or suppression. The burgeoning promise of RNA therapeutics "only makes the need for deciphering [noncoding] RNA function more urgent," Nils Walter of the Center for RNA Biomedicine at the University of Michigan, wrote in an article early in 2024. Succeeding in this goal, he adds, "would finally fulfill the promise of the Human Genome Project." EXPERT PERSPECTIVES • On April 25, Noëlle McAfee, a professor and chair of the philosophy department at Emory University, was arrested by police while they cleared student protestor encampments from the campus. University presidents must learn the vital role that their institutions play in the democratic process, and not call in outside police forces to break up peaceful protests, she writes. University administrators "should see their job as foremost to educate their students to become engaged members of society—with the side benefit of furthering the democratic process itself. ... Do not arrest bystanders like me and other professors and students who were calling for the police to stop and refusing to step away. Please don't do any of that." | 4 min read More Opinion I'm no fortune teller, but the 2012 announcement by geneticists that three quarters of the human genome gets translated into RNA, all of which have functional uses rather than being merely "junk," seems to have the traits of a paradigm-shifting discovery. To be sure, not all experts agree that noncoding RNA is doing anything particularly monumental, and only further investigation will build a case either way. But it's exciting to think that, in this lifetime, we may witness a major rewriting of what we thought we knew about human genetics.  Thank you for being part of our circle of science-curious readers! Email me anytime: newsletters@sciam.com. See you tomorrow. —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor Subscribe to this and all of our newsletters here. Scientific American One New York Plaza, New York, NY, 10004   Support our mission, subscribe to Scientific American here   Unsubscribe Email Preferences View in browser