How do we know RNA and DNA ‘sequences’ are sequences??? If there is one thing your challenges show is that the folding preferences are not sequential and are literally a 2D take on a 3D reality. How else do we explain two or more start and stop codons in a small nucleotide sequence 20 bases long? Is this why we are on the nucleotide base level and not in the triplet codons?
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Start and stop codons only pertain to RNA which codes for protein, with RNA taking its place in the traditional dogma of DNA->RNA->Protein. However, EteRNA focuses more on functional RNAs which can serve many roles traditionally thought of as belonging to proteins. These functional RNAs can be about 20 bases long in the case of mircoRNAs and can go up to a few thousand bases in length.
Over 98% of the human genome does not code for proteins, but much of this is still transcribed into RNA. Even RNA that does code for protein can still have other functions depending on its structure. Formerly seen as “junk DNA”, this uncommonly huge amount of the human genome that makes non-coding RNA is thought by some to be what makes humans stand out from the rest of life.
For more about how and why we study RNA in EteRNA, see About EteRNA: http://eterna.cmu.edu/htmls/abouteter…
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Thanks Daniel. This is a great answer and I appreciate it very much!
In CRISPR labs we deal with proteins cas9? DNA->RNA->Protein ? Any answers or links to learn more about how our RNA sequences deal with cas9 ?
