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Journal of Heredity Advance Access originally published online on July 30, 2009
Journal of Heredity 2009 100(5):597-604; doi:10.1093/jhered/esp064
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© The American Genetic Association. 2009. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org.

Genome Evolution Collection

The Modern RNP World of Eukaryotes

Lesley J. Collins, Charles G. Kurland, Patrick Biggs, and David Penny

From the Allan Wilson Center for Molecular Ecology and Evolution (Biggs), Institute of Molecular Biosciences, Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand (Collins and Penny); and the Department of Microbial Ecology, Lund University, Lund, Sweden (Kurland)

Address correspondence to Lesley J. Collins at the address above, or e-mail: l.j.collins{at}massey.ac.nz.

Eukaryote gene expression is mediated by a cascade of RNA functions that regulate, process, store, transport, and translate RNA transcripts. The RNA network that promotes this cascade depends on a large cohort of proteins that partner RNAs; thus, the modern RNA world of eukaryotes is really a ribonucleoprotein (RNP) world. Features of this "RNP infrastructure" can be related to the high cytosolic density of macromolecules and the large size of eukaryote cells. Because of the densely packed cytosol or nucleoplasm (with its severe restriction on diffusion of macromolecules), partitioning of the eukaryote cell into functionally specialized compartments is essential for efficiency. This necessitates the association of RNA and protein into large RNP complexes including ribosomes and spliceosomes. This is well illustrated by the ubiquitous spliceosome for which most components are conserved throughout eukaryotes and which interacts with other RNP-based machineries. The complexes involved in gene processing in modern eukaryotes have broad phylogenetic distributions suggesting that the common ancestor of extant eukaryotes had a fully evolved RNP network. Thus, the eukaryote genome may be uniquely informative about the transition from an earlier RNA genome world to the modern DNA genome world.

Key Words: molecular evolution • origin of eukaryotes • RNA infrastructure • RNA world

Corresponding Editor: Michael Lynch


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