How has industry exploited our understanding of the role of RNA molecules?
Before I answer the question I’d like to point to the word “exploited.” Could we, for the moment replace “exploit” with “profited from”? For the first time in science the Nobel Laureate Thomas Cech discovered that not all enzymes are made from proteins. He discovered that certain pieces of RNA possess catalytic activity which enables postassembly processing of portions of RNA that are headed for translation. This discovery was earth-shaking in a way in that it shows that the information contained in nucleic acids is not solely in the form of single linear base coding sequences but introduced the possibility of information being contained within the unique two and three-dimensional spatial configurations of RNA itself as well.
