ABOVE: ISTOCK.COM, WIR0MAN
F or the first time, scientists have found that complex sugars called glycans may bind to some RNA molecules, according to a bioRxiv preprint published September 30. The findings could substantially alter the current perception of RNA’s function.
“There really is no framework in biology as we know it today that would explain how RNA and glycans could ever be in the same place at the same time, much less be connected to each other,” senior author Carolyn Bertozzi, a chemical biologist at Stanford University, tells The Scientist.
Bertozzi’s lab found the sugars attached to RNA while studying glycosylation, a reaction where sugar molecules are attached to proteins or other organic molecules, in a human cell line. Glycosylation has many functions, including helping proteins fold and cells adhere to one another, and is the mechanism behind different blood types. First author Ryan Flynn, a postdoc in Bertozzi’s ...
