Macromolecular shredder for RNA: Researchers unravel the structure of the machinery for RNA disposal
Monday, February 4, 2013 - 20:30
in Biology & Nature
Much in the same way as we use shredders to destroy documents that are no longer useful or that contain potentially damaging information, cells use molecular machines to degrade unwanted or defective macromolecules. Scientists in Germany have now decoded the structure and the operating mechanism of the exosome, a macromolecular machine responsible for degradation of ribonucleic acids (RNAs) in eukaryotes.