Eric, Kyle and David’s review “RNA systems biology: uniting functional discoveries and structural tools to understand global roles of RNAs” is out in Current Opinion in Biotechnology! In this review, we outline the case that the time is right for a systems-level study of RNA structure and function – partly because of the rapid pace in which global regulatory roles of RNAs are being discovered and partly because of the emergence of ‘omics’-level tools for uncovering RNA structure transcriptome-wide. The review starts by highlighting some of the best research in functional RNA discovery. We then go into an overview of techniques that use next-generation sequencing to uncover RNA structure transcriptome-wide, and finish with some perspectives of where we see the most exciting research in RNA systems biology emerging.
For those that follow our work on SHAPE-Seq, you may be particularly interested in Eric’s figure that lays out all current sequencing-based RNA structure measurement tools on one diagram, highlighting the similarities and the powerful nature of these techniques. We hope it helps the community in using these techniques to uncover ‘omics’-level RNA structure/function principles!
Lucks Laboratory 