CFIm – even more reducibility

Earlier, I discussed interesting results indicating that the canonical Cleavage and Polyadenylation Specificity Factor (or CPSF) functions in the 3′ processing of histone mRNAs, a reaction that involves a subset of the proteins associated with mRNA 3′ end formation and polyadenylation. One developing idea I mentioned was that the polyadenylation complex may consist of a core that functions in other processes (such as histone mRNA 3′ end formation), and that its activity is modulated by a varying suite of accessory factors.  Recently, a study appeared that elaborates on this finding.  Briefly, Ruepp et al. have found that the 68 kD subunit of the so-called mammalian Cleavage Factor I (CFIm68, for short) associates with the U7 snRNP complex, and functions in histone mRNA 3′ processing.  As interestingly, they report that this subunit does not act with its partner in the nuclear polyadenylation complex, the 25 kD subunit of CFIm (CFIm25).

Daddy’s stories – Australian Rules Football

So, if you’ve got kids who were raised in the 90’s and after, they probably have a hard time believing you when you tell them about the good old days, when there were music videos on MTV and sports (other than poker) on ESPN after midnight.

I’ve told my kids (more times than they can care to hear, I’m sure) that they were raised on the oddball sports that ESPN showed at the wee hours (the times when I got to rock the babies back to sleep after the 2AM feeding) back when – things like Australian Rules Football.  I tried explaining these novelties, seemingly to no avail.

Pilgrimage

While in Seattle …

Recap

The RNA 2010 Meeting has come and gone.  Previously, in a sort of preview of coming attractions, I gave a list (from the conference web site) of the many invited speakers.  What I thought I would do here is toss out some random comments, to give readers a small taste of the meeting.  (One aside – the abstracts are not “open access” and attendees are asked in the abstract book to not cite anything without authors’ consent.  This means that I won’t be very explicit about the individual talks or posters.  However, in a few instances, I will provide links to related papers.)

Behe and the limits of evolution – revised

[Introductory remark – it was pointed out by a commenter on PT that my use of pollen grains in the original essay was confusing since it implied that the male-sterile phenotype is inherited paternally.  I was trying to squeeze as many genomes as possible into my scenario, to give Behe as much benefit as possible, and I used the numbers of pollen grains rather than kernels to that end.  However, after much reflection, I’ve decided to update the essay and remove the reference to pollen grains when “calculating” things.  I apologize for any confusion my previous discussion may have caused.]

Intelligent Design proponent Michael Behe has recently taken Ken Miller to task for the latter’s rough handling of another ID proponent’s handling of some concepts in evolution.  I don’t intend to add to the back and forth between the two (or three?) of them here.  Rather, I thought I would use one of Behe’s closing remarks as an excuse to repost a (slightly-modified) Panda’s Thumb essay that pertains to one of Behe’s newer calling cards – the so-called “Edge of Evolution”.