Posted on 06/11/2021 6:36:31 PM PDT by BenLurkin
Cells contain machinery that duplicates DNA into a new set that goes into a newly formed cell. That same class of machines, called polymerases, also build RNA messages, which are like notes copied from the central DNA repository of recipes, so they can be read more efficiently into proteins. But polymerases were thought to only work in one direction DNA into DNA or RNA. This prevents RNA messages from being rewritten back into the master recipe book of genomic DNA.
Pomerantz's team started by investigating one very unusual polymerase, called polymerase theta. Of the 14 DNA polymerases in mammalian cells, only three do the bulk of the work of duplicating the entire genome to prepare for cell division. The remaining 11 are mostly involved in detecting and making repairs when there's a break or error in the DNA strands. Polymerase theta repairs DNA, but is very error-prone and makes many errors or mutations. The researchers therefore noticed that some of polymerase theta's "bad" qualities were ones it shared with another cellular machine, albeit one more common in viruses—the reverse transcriptase. Like Pol theta, HIV reverse transcriptase acts as a DNA polymerase, but can also bind RNA and read RNA back into a DNA strand.
[T]he researchers tested polymerase theta against the reverse transcriptase from HIV, which is one of the best studied of its kind. They showed that polymerase theta was capable of converting RNA messages into DNA, which it did as well as HIV reverse transcriptase, and that it actually did a better job than when duplicating DNA to DNA. Polymerase theta was more efficient and introduced fewer errors when using an RNA template to write new DNA messages, than when duplicating DNA into DNA, suggesting that this function could be its primary purpose in the cell.
(Excerpt) Read more at phys.org ...
They won’t get it.
Why are these articles so horribly written?
It seems good science writers are only allowed to write political articles in the guise of science. So good non-political articles on interesting subjects are written by bad writers.
You’re stretching too dogmatically the opposite way.
Mosaicism happens. McClintock wasn’t understood or perhaps believed, it was too far out.
First thing I remember my advisor saying way back when was there are no absolutes in biology.
Who cares what you “head off”?
But almost anything makes more sense than “random selection” as an origin of the species.
Not at all. I’m putting context to what the research that’s been done so far has to say. I have no doubt some will come here to extrapolate 30 steps after in a direction that fits their selected narrative, but that would be totally unsupported by this research.
It’s interesting work. It does NOT support the concept of mRNA from a vaccine somehow becoming integrated into a person’s genome. Some will pervert the research to say that because they desperately WANT it to say that, but it doesn’t.
“It does NOT support the concept of mRNA from a vaccine somehow becoming integrated into a person’s genome”
Actually it does support the concept.
It provides a conceptual (your term) mechanism other than endogenous rt or previous retrovirus infection.
I remember when people knew RNA was not catalytic.
“They won’t get it.”
Yes we will. It’s Wabbit season.
Chuckle.
A well-stated explanation. Yet I can imagine dangerous lines of research into how this newly-discovered RNA transcriptase might be used to facilitate revisions to germline DNA.
The dogma is that it is a one way path: DNA>>RNA>>Protein.
In this model DNA is like Read Only Memory. You can copy, but not change. You might misread the text, but the original text cannot be changed.
If you can copy RNA back to DNA? Think Wikipedia. Any Yahoo can change the original text.
Not aliens.
Mutants.
Or Altereds.
At this time I’m OK with it - at least that’s what the green stuff in the Betty Crocker tub says.
We are all gonna die.
Who are Hagler and Hearns?
Walking brain-dead?
Vegas middleweight matchup 1985.
Why are you posting images that link to a dangerous website?
"It will be exciting to further understand how polymerase theta's activity on RNA contributes to DNA repair and cancer-cell proliferation."
GMO
&
Non-GMO Heirloom
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.