I wasn't too surprised to learn that Hasletine had also gotten this crazy idea1 published in the scientific literature.
Haseltine, W.A. and Patarca, R. (2024) The RNA revolution in the central molecular biology dogma evolution. International Journal of Molecular Sciences 25:12695. doi: [doi: 10.3390/ijms252312695]
Human genome projects in the 1990s identified about 20,000 protein-coding sequences. We are now in the RNA revolution, propelled by the realization that genes determine phenotype beyond the foundational central molecular biology dogma, stating that inherited linear pieces of DNA are transcribed to RNAs and translated into proteins. Crucially, over 95% of the genome, initially considered junk DNA between protein-coding genes, encodes essential, functionally diverse non-protein-coding RNAs, raising the gene count by at least one order of magnitude. Most inherited phenotype-determining changes in DNA are in regulatory areas that control RNA and regulatory sequences. RNAs can directly or indirectly determine phenotypes by regulating protein and RNA function, transferring information within and between organisms, and generating DNA. RNAs also exhibit high structural, functional, and biomolecular interaction plasticity and are modified via editing, methylation, glycosylation, and other mechanisms, which bestow them with diverse intra- and extracellular functions without altering the underlying DNA. RNA is, therefore, currently considered the primary determinant of cellular to populational functional diversity, disease-linked and biomolecular structural variations, and cell function regulation. As demonstrated by RNA-based coronavirus vaccines’ success, RNA technology is transforming medicine, agriculture, and industry, as did the advent of recombinant DNA technology in the 1980s.
What surprised me was a comment by John Harshman who pointed out that the International Journal of Molecular Sciences is one of many journals published by MDPI and this company has been identified as a predatory open access publishing company. [Is MDPI Predatory?] Predatory publishing companies will publish almost anything with very little peer review or editing.
One of the characteristic features of such predatory journals is a very fast turnaround from the time of submission to publication. For example, the Haseltine and Patarca paper was received on November 11, 2024, revised on Nov. 24, 2024, accepted on Nov. 25, 2024, and published the next day. The time from submission to publication was 15 days! No reasonable person could possibly believe that it was adequately reviewed by experts in the field.
I'm very much aware of the spread of misinformation in the scientific literature but I didn't realize that fake scientific journals could be contributing to that spread and I certainly never thought that a (formerly) respected scientist would actually publish in such a journal.
1. The crazy idea is that scientists in the 1960s and 1970s didn't know about regulatory sequences and non-coding genes. Haseltine was there; his Ph.D. supervisors were Jim Watson and Wally Gilbert and he did his postdoc with David Baltimore. The other part of the crazy idea is that the central dogma was all about proteins being the only important thing that was specified by DNA. That's not correct. It is not a "paradigm" that has to be overthrown by recent discoveries. The third part of the crazy idea is that there are more non-coding genes than protein coding genes. That has not been demonstrated and it's very unlikely that we are ever going to find solid evidence for more than 20,000 non-coding genes.
8 comments :
There is nothing Wrong with the article's statement.
Firstly, we know that central dogma is obsolete.
That's because of prion proteins which can send their misfolded forms to other proteins and even guide the ribosomal machinery to establish a new misfolded prions ( that is literally the transfer of information from proteins to RNA).
Secondly, every day a new function for non- coding RNA is being published. RNAs that functions as scaffolding, regulation, chemical modification, immunities, and lots of others
As I mentioned previously, the weirdest thing about that abstract is that he illustrates his massive paradigm shift by referring to technology that uses good old-fashioned mRNA that gets translated to protein.
The central dogma is about the transer of sequence information (the key word there is 'SEQUENCE') from nucleic acid to nucleic acid, or from nucleic acid to amino acid sequence. Since prions misfold other proteins, they do not transer their amino acid sequence to them, and therefore do not voilate the central dogma.
The same goes for proteins that modify, or promote the polymerization of nucleic acid sequences (such as reverse transcriptase): Since they do not transfer their own amino acid sequence back into nucleic acid sequence, they do not violate the central dogm.
Sorry but you've been misinformed.
I must disagree. A new paradigm is needed, always, and in all fields. Thomas Kuhn, in his 1962 book, made clear that really brilliant scientists introduced new paradigms, while not-so-brilliant scientists did Normal Science. In the 1970s more and more ambitious graduated students announced new paradigms. I decided to become unique among young scientists by not introducing a new paradigm; by doing Normal Science. But after a while, with everyone else introducing new paradigms, I realized that doing Normal Science might then be, in effect, a new paradigm. Which creates a dilemma.
... graduate students ...
@Joe Felsenstein It's still a dilemma. Modern postdocs and graduate students are still overthrowing the old paradigms at an alarming rate.
If revolutions in the field are so common then I think you're on to something. The new-new paradigm is to stick with the old paradigms! Kuhn is spinning in his grave.
I remember I read a comment somewhere saying some scientists can overturn paradigms before lunchtime, at least once a week.
-César
There's a joke about "paradigms lost" in there somewhere, but I'm too lazy to work it out.
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