Small Ribonucleoproteins from Eukaryotes: Structures and Roles in RNA Biogenesis

1. J.A. Steitz,
2. S.L. Wolin,
3. J. Rinke,
4. I. Pettersson,
5. S.M. Mount,
6. E.A. Lerner,
7. M. Hinterberger, and
8. E. Gottlieb

1. Department of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut 06510

Excerpt

Only recently have the many and varied types of small ribonucleoproteins (RNPs) resident in mammalian cells become accessible to analysis. These entities—defined as tight complexes of one or more proteins with a small RNA molecule (up to about 300 nucleotides)—were first discovered in 1979 to react with antibodies from certain patients with autoimmune disease (Lerner and Steitz 1979). Subsequent utilization of many different patients' sera has allowed the classification of mammalian small RNPs into several distinct groups (M.R. Lerner et al. 1981b). In the cases to be discussed, the protein moieties, rather than the RNA moieties, carry the antigenic determinants. Therefore, if a particular cellular RNA-binding protein is associated with more than one RNA, all those RNAs will be coprecipitated by autoantibodies to the common protein.

The major classes of mammalian small RNPs defined in this way are listed in Table 1 along with some data on their RNA and...