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The largest range of validated ChIP antibodies


The largest range of validated ChIP antibodies


“Hardcore RNA chemist” Saba Valadkhan in the lab. Countering resistance


To get a sense of the dif ficulties researchers face in Noncodarnia, look no further than Case Western University biochemist Saba Valadkhan. When Valadkhan started her lncRNA


project in 2006, there were no deep sequencing or large-scale transcriptomic data available. “We had to rely on a very small number of accidentally discovered long noncoding RNAs to choose one for our studies.” Not wanting to step on anybody’s


toes, Valadkhan searched the liter- ature for interesting but “abandoned” lncRNAs. She settled on a bone morpho- genic protein-induced transcript first described in 1998. But working with that transcript,


Supported by comprehensive experimental data:


Supported by comprehensive experimental data:


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• Over 1,000 images • More than 1,900 user reviews • Cited in over 3,750 publications


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she says, has been a challenge. “We really didn’t even know what to worry about and what would be okay.” For instance, when cloning the transcript, what would happen if extra sequences were tacked onto the 5´ or 3´ ends? “They can potentially change the secondary structure of the RNA in these regions ... or they can be binding sites for proteins that shouldn’t be bound to this RNA.” Knockdowns weren’t obvious, either. Where, for instance, should she target the interfering RNAs? Function was a problem, as was the


dearth of knowledgeable colleagues. And so, when the data started rolling in, Valadkhan’s team wasn’t sure how to deal with it. They didn’t know, for instance, how much of a phenotypic response was real as opposed to noise.


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The only thing they knew for sure was that their RNA seemed to be doing something amazing. When overexpressed in myoblasts,


the transcript caused the cells to “change shape strongly and [start] to grow little processes.” The team had no idea what that meant, but the postdoc doing this work thought the cells kind of looked like neurons. “Lo and behold they were screaming with neuronal marker expression,” Valadkhan says. This was in 2007, she says, shortly


after Shinya Yamanaka introduced the world to induced pluripotent stem cells. Nobody doubts the power of transcription factors to alter cell fate, yet Valadkhan’s discovery that noncoding RNAs evidently do the same, remains unpublished. “The reviewers hated it,” she says.


“They said this must be an artifact.” Reviewers asked for control after


control. They demanded knockout mice. They even questioned Valadkhan, whose background is in “hardcore RNA chemistry,” on her ability to culture cells. Six years later the paper is once again


under review. “Again they have asked for quite a number of things,” she says, “but at least the tone of the reviewers has become more and more positive with every submission. I think it’s partly because we are adding a lot more controls and data,” she allows. “But partly also because people are appreciating that these RNAs can really do these kinds of things.” For too long, Mattick says, the broad


molecular biology community has acted as if it had the conceptual framework of cellular genetic regulation more or less figured out, thanks to promoters, enhancers, and transcription factors. “They decided they understood the system 50 years ago, after just a decade or so of initial work, and haven’t really changed their minds since.” That view seems final ly to be


changing, Mattick says. It looks to be a fine day in Noncodarnia.


1. A. Maxmen, “Te genome’s rising stars,” Nature, 496:127−9, 2013.


2. J.S. Mattick, “Non-coding RNAs: the architects of eukaryotic complexity,” EMBO Reports, 2:986−91, 2001.


3. J.T.Y. Kung et al., “Long noncoding RNAs: Past, present, and future,” Genetics, 193:651−669, 2013.


Written by Jeffrey M. Perkel, Ph.D.


BioTechniques 54:301-304 (June 2013) doi: 10.2144/000114037


www.BioTechniques.com


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