A Lifelong Passion for All Things Ribonucleic.

This year's Lasker-Koshland Special Achievement Award is given to Joan Argetsinger Steitz for her RNA research discoveries and her exemplary international leadership.

Leading and Inspiring by Example.

Joan Steitz radiates a passion for science. Whether she's teaching an undergraduate course, mentoring a grad student or post-doc, or speaking at a scientific conference, her enthusiasm and curiosity for all things RNA is infectious. Joan, the recipient of the 2018 Lasker-Koshland Special Achievement Award in Medical Science, spoke with Cell editor (and her former post-doc) Lara Szewczak about how she came to be an advocate for women in science and shared advice for young scientists entering the research community today. Annotated excerpts from this conversation are presented below, and the full conversation is available with the article online.

The Hammerhead Ribozyme: A Long History for a Short RNA.

Small nucleolytic ribozymes are a family of naturally occurring RNA motifs that catalyse a self-transesterification reaction in a highly sequence-specific manner. The hammerhead ribozyme was the first reported and the most extensively studied member of this family. However, and despite intense biochemical and structural research for three decades since its discovery, the history of this model ribozyme seems to be far from finished. The hammerhead ribozyme has been regarded as a biological oddity typical of small circular RNA pathogens of plants. More recently, numerous and new variations of this ribozyme have been found to inhabit the genomes of organisms from all life kingdoms, although their precise biological functions are not yet well understood.

Dinamismo vital, el dogma de la medicina homeopática / Vital dynamism, the dogma of homeopathic medicine

El dinamismo vital ha tenido diversas interpretaciones a lo largo del tiempo. El maestro Samuel Hahnemann ha sido pionero al dar una primera concepción a la fuerza y al sistema que controlan el equilibrio en el organismo. Visionario para su tiempo y sin las herramientas que ahora acompañan a la biología molecular, élsupo conjeturar que existía un procesamiento complejo en cada una de las células que nos conforman como seres vivos y que, gracias al avance tecnológico, hoy recibe el nombre de dogma central de la biología molecular, mismo que se encuentra compuesto por la replicación del ADN, la transcripción del ARN y la traducciónde las proteínas, asegurando así la ejecución de la vida mediante un mecanismo siempre dinámico. (AU)

The vital dynamism has undergone various interpretations over time. The teacher Samuel Hahnemann pioneered the first notion about both the strength and the system that control the body balance. Visionary for his time and without the tools now accompanying the molecular biology, he envisioned that there existed a complex processing in every cell making us up as living beings, and that thanks to technological breakthroughs, today it is called the central dogma of molecular biology, which is composed of the replication of DNA, RNA transcription and protein translation, thus ensuring the realization of life through an ever dynamic mechanism. (AU)

The "strong" RNA world hypothesis: fifty years old.

This year marks the 50(th) anniversary of a proposal by Alex Rich that RNA, as a single biopolymer acting in two capacities, might have supported both genetics and catalysis at the origin of life. We review here both published and previously unreported experimental data that provide new perspectives on this old proposal. The new data include evidence that, in the presence of borate, small amounts of carbohydrates can fix large amounts of formaldehyde that are expected in an environment rich in carbon dioxide. Further, we consider other species, including arsenate, arsenite, phosphite, and germanate, that might replace phosphate as linkers in genetic biopolymers. While linkages involving these oxyanions are judged to be too unstable to support genetics on Earth, we consider the possibility that they might do so in colder semi-aqueous environments more exotic than those found on Earth, where cosolvents such as ammonia might prevent freezing at temperatures well below 273 K. These include the ammonia-water environments that are possibly present at low temperatures beneath the surface of Titan, Saturn's largest moon.

How the discovery of ribozymes cast RNA in the roles of both chicken and egg in origin-of-life theories.

Scientific theories about the origin-of-life theories have historically been characterized by the chicken-and-egg problem of which essential aspect of life was the first to appear, replication or self-sustenance. By the 1950s the question was cast in molecular terms and DNA and proteins had come to represent the carriers of the two functions. Meanwhile, RNA, the other nucleic acid, had played a capricious role in origin theories. Because it contained building blocks very similar to DNA, biologists recognized early that RNA could store information in its linear sequences. With the discovery in the 1980s that RNA molecules were capable of biological catalysis, a function hitherto ascribed to proteins alone, RNA took on the role of the single entity that could act as both chicken and egg. Within a few years of the discovery of these catalytic RNAs (ribozymes) scientists had formulated an RNA World hypothesis that posited an early phase in the evolution of life where all key functions were performed by RNA molecules. This paper traces the history the role of RNA in origin-of-life theories with a focus on how the discovery of ribozymes influenced the discourse.

The biochemical roots of the RNA world: from zymonucleic acid to ribozymes.

The history of the ideas that led to the RNA World hypothesis is reviewed. As the understanding of the properties of RNA molecules progressed, the evolutionary interpretation of their genetic properties and widespread distribution in intracellular environments, as well as the catalytic properties of nucleotide coenzymes and the participation of RNA monomers in metabolic pathways, led to several independent proposals of protein-free primordial life forms. Current ideas on the RNA World are part of a long and storied scientific perspective in which these different hypotheses were developed. However, the lack of continuity between them may be explained in part by the absence of an evolutionary framework that characterized the early development of molecular biology, as well as by the demise of certain areas of research like coenzyme chemistry.

Bovine pancreatic ribonuclease: fifty years of the first enzymatic reaction mechanism.

Fifty years ago, the group of Tony Mathias and Bob Rabin at University College London deduced the first mechanism for catalysis by an enzyme, ribonuclease [Findlay, D., Herries, D. G., Mathias, A. P., Rabin, B. R., and Ross, C. A. (1961) Nature 190, 781-784]. Here, we celebrate this historic accomplishment by surveying knowledge of enzymology and protein science at that time, facts that led to the formulation of the mechanism, criticisms and alternative mechanisms, data that supported the proposed mechanism, and some of the refinements that have since provided a more precise picture of catalysis of RNA cleavage by ribonucleases. The Mathias and Rabin mechanism has appeared in numerous textbooks, monographs, and reviews and continues to have a profound impact on biochemistry.

[Giuseppe Attardi: mitochondrial genetic system and its influence in the study of the mitochondrial diseases]. / Giuseppe Attardi: sistema genético mitocondrial y su influencia en las enfermedades neuromusculares mitocondriales.

AIM: To describe the scientific contributions and biography of Giuseppe Attardi (1923-2008), in particular his work on the human mitochondrial genetic system of crucial importance for the discovery and understanding of the mechanisms that produce the mitochondrial diseases. DEVELOPMENT: Giuseppe Attardi was an Italian-born medical doctor that worked with outstanding researchers as James Watson, Francois Jacob, and Renato Dulbecco, all Nobel Prizes of Medicine until 1963 that was promoted to Professor of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena (USA). In 1967 discovered the human mitochondrial RNA, a little later the mitochondrial ribosomes and proteins encoded in the genome, in 1981 showed the genetic and transcription map of the mitochondrial DNA, and in 1983 described the proteins codified in this genome, all of them components of the oxidative phosphorylation system, metabolic pathway that leads to the synthesis of ATP. Later, he developed a technique, widely used nowadays, to study the mechanism by which the mutations in the mitochondrial DNA altered the cellular function and originated the mitochondrial diseases. In 1999, demonstrated the role of the mitocondrial DNA, and the mutations produced along the life, in aging.

[Scientific and practical applications of molecular colonies].

Reviewed are the history of invention of the molecular colony technique, also known under name "polony technology", applications of this method to studies of reactions between single RNA molecules, ultrasensitive diagnostics, gene cloning and screening in vitro, and also concepts on the origin of life that consider molecular colonies as a prototype of living organisms.

Ernest Frederick Gale: 15 July 1914 - 7 March 2005.

Scientists will remember Ernest Gale for his role in emphasizing, at an early stage in his career, the chemical and enzymatic basis of microbial activities at a time when many cellular components and biochemicals were ill defined, and secondly for his leadership of a team of colleagues who investigated the molecular basis of antibiotic action and in so doing elucidated many basic aspects of bacterial metabolism.

Discovering the RNA double helix and hybridization.

The discovery, 50 years ago, that RNA could form a double helix made possible a number of advances, including an understanding that led, decades later, to the discovery of microRNAs and RNA interference. Remarkably, the first nucleic acid hybridization reaction was also described in the same report.