Finding the tail end: The discovery of RNA splicing

Abstract

Major findings are sometimes hidden in small details. At least that was the case when, in a PNAS article, molecular biologist Phillip Sharp and his research team described a little strand of RNA that led to an understanding of how proteins are synthesized in cells (1). Fig. 1. Members of the MIT Center for Cancer Research (Robert Weinberg, Second Row from Bottom, Far Left ; Susan Berget, Third Row from Bottom, Third from Left ; Claire Moore, Back Row, Fourth from Left ; Philip Sharp, Back Row, Far Right ). Image courtesy of Robert Weinberg. Fig. 2. ( A–C ) Electron micrograph of a hexon mRNA hybridized to an adenovirus genome fragment. The arrows in the micrographs mark the single-stranded RNA tails at the ends of the RNA/DNA hybrid. The 5’ to 3’ orientation of the mRNA is indicated in C , and the displaced single-stranded viral DNA is shown as a thin line. Reproduced with permission from ref. 1. Fig. 3. ( A ) Phillip Sharp receives the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine from King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden. Image courtesy of Tobbe Gustavsson/Reportagebild/TT/Sipa USA. ( B ) Richard Roberts receives the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine from King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden. Image courtesy of AGIP/Rue des Archives/Granger, NYC. During the 1970s, Sharp headed a laboratory in the Center for Cancer Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Having been a postdoctoral researcher for geneticist James Watson and then a staff member at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) prior to his appointment at MIT, Sharp was drawn to studying genes and measuring chromosome sizes. The field of genetics was relatively primitive; Watson and Francis Crick had discovered DNA’s structure only 2 decades earlier. Molecular biologists at the time worked almost exclusively with bacterial systems, which are easy to grow in a laboratory. …