{"id":122675,"date":"2021-05-18T08:23:01","date_gmt":"2021-05-18T15:23:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/05\/some-rna-molecules-have-unexpected-sugar-coating"},"modified":"2021-05-18T08:23:01","modified_gmt":"2021-05-18T15:23:01","slug":"some-rna-molecules-have-unexpected-sugar-coating","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/05\/some-rna-molecules-have-unexpected-sugar-coating","title":{"rendered":"Some RNA molecules have unexpected sugar coating"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/some-rna-molecules-have-unexpected-sugar-coating.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A literature search revealed that one of the Siglec molecules had been previously linked to the autoimmune disease lupus. Finding connections between these different kinds of molecules starts to fill in a new and emerging picture of biology, Bertozzi says. That picture may look something like this: RNA hangs out on the cell surface, decorated with sugars. These sugars stick to Siglec proteins that help the immune system distinguish friend from foe.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>In a surprise find, scientists have discovered sugar-coated RNA molecules decorating the surface of cells.<\/p>\n<p>These so-called \u2018glycoRNAs\u2019 poke out from mammalian cells\u2019 outer membrane, where they can interact with other molecules. This discovery, reported May 17, 2021, in the journal <i>Cell<\/i>, upends the current understanding of how the cell handles RNAs and glycans.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis was probably the biggest scientific shock of my life,\u201d says study author Carolyn Bertozzi, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator at Stanford University. \u201cBased on the framework by which we understand <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/cell+biology\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">cell biology<\/a>, there\u2019s no place where <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/glycan\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">glycan<\/a> sugars and RNA would physically touch each other.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A literature search revealed that one of the Siglec molecules had been previously linked to the autoimmune disease lupus. Finding connections between these different kinds of molecules starts to fill in a new and emerging picture of biology, Bertozzi says. That picture may look something like this: RNA hangs out on the cell surface, decorated [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":621,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-122675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/621"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122675"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122675\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}