Question

1. Circular RNAs are emerging as important new class of RNA molecules in cells and in animals. Defend this statement by describing the functions of circular RNAs and providing research evidence documented in the literature. (5 marks)

Answer 1

ANSWER :-

1. Regulation can be defined as a process during which an effective control can be seen in case of expression of a particular gene. There are many factors which are associated with the control of the gene expression at various stages. The genes can thus be modified in terms of its expression and thus in this answer I would like to include the role of one such potential regulatory molecule namely the circular RNA's which are the cleavage products.
2. Post-translational modifications such as glycosylation are important events which helps in directing or mediating the activity of a particular protein or enzyme. This moiety is also regarded as a regulatory molecule of post-translational modification. The molecule usually arises by means of many processes out of which one is the exon scrambling process during which the mRNA strand rather than carrying out the activity of splicing in an ordered manner leads to the cleavage in a non-specific manner thereby creating exon breaks and thus forming new circular structures as the name suggests.
3. These structures may show repeats of introns as well as intrinsic intronal alterations which in turn may affect the activity of the circular RNA's. Another most important point is that due to the circular nature just like the plasmid, these are not acted upon by exonuclease activity due to lack of terminals or polarity. This in turn makes them much resistant to the degradation process by means of intrinsic cellular enzymes. Lets consider the example of this element isolated from plant. This shows relatively less gene alterations in the form of repeats which in turn enhances their efficiency in terms of a regulatory response. This suggests that the synthesis of this molecule is specified by alternate processes which in turn can be stated in the form of various exonal associations and thus suggests a role in different conditions which may initiate its synthesis. In plants than in animals, the stability of the regulatory process is more.

4. Various functional analysis data suggest that the expression of these elements with respect to the sequence from which they are synthesized gives an idea about the expression of these elements in particular structures and thus helps us to derive their expression only in terms of tolerance to an external condition which may act as a stress factor.

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