A Molecule That Shouldn’t Exist – “The Biggest Scientific Shock of My Life”

A variety of molecules protrude from the cell surface, including glycoproteins, glycolipids, and the newly discovered glycoRNAs. This illustration depicts RNA as a double-stranded stem and a loop, and the glycan as a Tinkertoy-like structure branching off it. Credit: Emily M. Eng/R. Flynn et al./Cell 2021

Sugars attach to certain RNA molecules on the outside membrane of the cell. The newly discovered “glycoRNAs” may be involved in immune signaling.

These so-called “glycoRNAs” poke out from mammalian cells’ outer membrane, where they can interact with other molecules. This discovery, reported May 17, 2021, in the journal Cell, upends the current understanding of how the cell handles RNAs and glycans.

“This was probably the biggest scientific shock of my life,” says study author Carolyn Bertozzi, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator at Stanford University. “Based on the framework by which we understand cell biology, there’s no place where glycan sugars and RNA would physically touch each other.”

Normally, RNA is made in the nucleus and transported to the cytoplasm, where it serves as a template for making proteins. Until now, scientists thought glycans were kept separate. But the new work suggests that the two molecules actually meet up, and the sugar-coated RNAs take a trip to the cell surface.

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