NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Invitrogen announced today that it has licensed exclusive rights from Australian company IMBcom to commercialize new non-coding RNA molecules as they are developed.
Invitrogen said the agreement will expand its RNA product portfolio, and its NCode microRNA microarray product line in particular.
Having access to non-coding RNAs will allow researchers to simultaneously investigate coding and non-coding sequences by microarray. Because non-coding RNAs are believed to influence many cellular processes, including stem cell development and cancer, understanding how these molecules interact with and influence mRNA expression will likely be an important area of research.
“It appears that we have misunderstood the nature of genetic programming in humans and other complex organisms,” University of Queensland molecular biologist John Mattick said in a statement. “Most of the genome is transcribed, mainly into non-coding RNAs, which appear to comprise a hidden layer of gene regulation whose full dimensions are just beginning to be explored.”
Researchers at the University of Queensland in Brisbane are using a proprietary algorithm to predict the new non-coding RNAs, which are subsequently validated experimentally. So far the algorithm has predicted tens of thousands of human and mouse sequences related to both coding and non-coding RNA.