A new type of biomolecule has been discovered. Free Technical Library News

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New type of biomolecule discovered

25.05.2021

Biologists are fairly well versed in the basic molecular building blocks that make up living organisms. They have carbohydrates (such as starch), lipids (fats), nucleic acids (DNA), and proteins (muscles). They are divided into subtypes; for example, cellulose and sugars are carbohydrates. In addition, there are combinations between these groups, for example, various sugars combine with lipids in red blood cells to determine blood groups.

Glycans are chains of sugar molecules that can attach to fats and proteins in a process called glycosylation, helping them move through the cell or fold into the correct shapes. They are involved in many fundamental processes of biology, from embryonic development to pathogen recognition.

But now, researchers led by biochemist Ryan Flynn, who works at Boston Children's Hospital, have found that glycans can also attach to non-coding RNAs. They established this by tagging glycol molecules with sialic acid in laboratory cells and extracting the RNA from them. Some of the RNAs had a sugar coating labeled with sialic acid.

This was a surprise because previously it was believed that RNA functions only inside cells - in their nuclei and fluid, while glycans are usually separated from them by membranes in the cell organelles or on its surface.

The team found glycoRNA in every cell tested - in humans, mice, hamsters and zebrafish - species separated by hundreds of millions of years of evolution. This suggests that glycoRNA molecules may have some important biological function that persists throughout life on Earth.

By comparing the RNA regions of glycoRNAs with known databases, Flynn and colleagues found that some of them corresponded to RNAs associated with various autoimmune diseases.

It was previously thought that these RNA fragments were largely inaccessible to the immune system because they were hidden inside cells and released only when they died. But now glycoRNAs are found to be on the surface of the cell, just like proteins and lipids. This means that glycoRNAs can directly participate in intercellular communication, in parallel with other cell surface biomolecules such as glycoproteins/lipids, but with different dynamics, stability or configurations.

However, the ability of glycans to bind directly to RNA seems unlikely. Scientists suspect that there is a third, very small molecule in glycoRNA that acts as a glue.

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