What is it about?
This is a review about the discovery of the guanine-quadruplexe (G4) and later the discovery of their biological function. G4s are motifs formed by DNA or RNA that are guanine rich. It makes a very stable "bulge" that blocks some molecular functions. Hence, G4 play a very important role in cell biological functions regulation. They were discovered in protozoa, unicellular eukaryotes, and some of them, like Plasmodium or Trypanosoma, are parasitic life forms. Then G4 were characterised in human (cancer) and in some viruses. The literature on those last topics took over the one on protozoa. Now research on these motifs is coming back in protozoa since they can be interesting mechanism to disturb in the hope to find new drugs.
Featured Image
Why is it important?
G4 appeared to be very important in cancer development. It is good to remind to the community where they are coming from. Protozoa in general are neglected but if there is a domain where they are not very important and can be established as model organism, it is in the study of G4.
Perspectives
Protozoa offer a unique opportunity to investigate regulatory functions since with the same genome they go through several different life stages. Therefore, they are a perfect model to study DNA and RNA regulatory motifs.
Dr Franck Dumetz
University of Maryland
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Parasitic Protozoa: Unusual Roles for G-Quadruplexes in Early-Diverging Eukaryotes, Molecules, April 2019, MDPI AG,
DOI: 10.3390/molecules24071339.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
