Weekly RNA News - Week IX - March 2011

Mackay @ U. Sidney, Font and Segal @ UCDavis
The Prospects for Designer Single-stranded RNA-binding Proteins (RBP)
Nature Structure and Molecular Bio., 18, 256-261 (2011)
There are an array of possible uses that RNA-binding proteins could be engineered for. The following figure in their publication makes a nice review of such possibilities.

In their review they show that there are mainly four classes of RBP's. They are called RNA recognition motifs (RRM), Pumilio repeat domains (PUF), human heterogeneous nuclear ribonucleoprotein K homology (KH), and zinc-fingers (ZF). Of these proteins so far the most efficient in recognition are the PUF ones, but the authors point out that this might be due to the infancy of the field.
They also mention the possibility of having proteins that bind to double-stranded RNA's, like the ones present in viruses and in the "new" RNA world of small interfering RNA's and micro RNA's, but focus their attention on single stranded RNA binding, which makes sense if one wants to target mRNA.
I find this review very interesting since in the greater sense it implicitly says that this is a way to bring back the game to proteins. Just by looking at their very neat figure for possible protein-ssRNA interactions one just can't help to wonder that the yellow blob, instead of being a protein, could be an RNA, a DNA, a PNA, or a modified nucleic acid.