General and Historical

Berget, S.M., C. Moore, and P.A. Sharp. 1977. Spliced segments at the 5′ terminus of adenovirus 2 late mRNA. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 74:3171–3175.

Chow, L.T., R.E. Glinas, T.R. Broker, and R.J. Roberts. 1977. An amazing sequence arrangement at the 5′ ends of adenovirus 2 messenger RNA. Cell 12:1–8.

Koonin, E.V. 2006. The origin of introns and their role in eukaryogenesis: A compromise solution to the introns-early versus introns-late debate? Biol. Direct 1:22, doi: 10.1186/1745-6150-1-22.

Mount, S.M., I. Pettersson, M. Hinterberger, A. Karmas, and J.A. Steitz. 1983. The U1 small nuclear RNA–protein complex selectively binds a 5′ splice site in vitro. Cell 33:509–518.

Padgett, R.A., S.M. Mount, J.A. Steitz, and P.A. Sharp. 1983. Splicing of messenger RNA precursors is inhibited by antisera to small nuclear ribonucleoprotein. Cell 35:101–107.

Steitz, J.A. 1988. “Snurps.” Sci. Am. 258(6):56–60, 63. A useful review.

Pre-mRNA Splicing and RNA Editing

Collins, C.A., and C. Guthrie. 2000. The question remains: Is the spliceosome a ribozyme? Nat. Struct. Biol. 7:850–854. This short review provides insight into the catalytic mechanism of the spliceosome and its possible evolutionary origins.

Le Hir, H., A. Nott, and M.J. Moore. 2003. How introns influence and enhance eukaryotic gene expression. Trends Biochem. Sci. 28:215–220. A summary of the ways in which splicing affects the expression of proteins in eukaryotic cells.

Nishikura, K. 2010. Functions and regulation of RNA editing by ADAR deaminases. Annu. Rev. Biochem. 79:321–349.

Stuart, K.D., A. Schnaufer, N.L. Ernst, and A.K. Panigrahi. 2005. Complex management: RNA editing in trypanosomes. Trends Biochem. Sci. 30:97–105. A short and insightful review of RNA editing mechanisms.

RNA Transport and Degradation

Belasco, J.G. 2010. All things must pass: Contrasts and commonalities in eukaryotic and bacterial mRNA decay. Nat. Rev. Mol. Cell Biol. 11:467–478. A discussion of the mechanistic parallels between the cellular factors and molecular events that govern mRNA degradation in eukaryotes and bacteria.

Eulalio, A., I. Behm-Ansmant, and E. Izaurralde. 2007. P bodies: At the crossroads of post-transcriptional pathways. Nat. Rev. Mol. Cell Biol. 8:9–22.

Kindler, S., H. Wang, D. Richter, and H. Tiedge. 2005. RNA transport and local control of translation. Annu. Rev. Cell Dev. Biol. 21:223–245.

Parker, R., and H. Song. 2004. The enzymes and control of eukaryotic mRNA turnover. Nat. Struct. Mol. Biol. 11:121–127.

Strässer, K., S. Masuda, P. Mason, J. Pfannstiel, M. Oppizzi, S. Rodriguez-Navarro, A.G. Rondón, A. Aguilera, K. Struhl, R. Reed, and E. Hurt. 2002. TREX is a conserved complex coupling transcription with messenger RNA export. Nature 417:304–308.

Processing of Non-Protein-Coding RNAs

Doudna, J.A., and T.R. Cech. 2002. The chemical repertoire of natural ribozymes. Nature 418:222–228.

Gingeras, T.R. 2009. Implications of chimaeric non-colinear transcripts. Nature 461:206–211.

Khalil, A.M., M. Guttman, M. Huarte, M. Garber, A. Raj, D. Rivea Morales, K. Thomas, A. Presser, B.E. Bernstein, A. van Oudenaarden, et al. 2009. Many human large intergenic noncoding RNAs associate with chromatin-modifying complexes and affect gene expression. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 106:11,667–11,672.

Wilson, D.S., and J.W. Szostak. 1999. In vitro selection of functional nucleic acids. Annu. Rev. Biochem. 68:611–647.

RNA Catalysis and the RNA World Hypothesis

Hagiwara, Y., M.J. Field, O. Nureki, and M. Tateno. 2010. Editing mechanism of aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases operates by a hybrid ribozyme/protein catalyst. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 132:2751–2758.

Marvin, M.C., and D.R. Engelke. 2009. Broadening the mission of an RNA enzyme. J. Cell. Biochem. 108:1244–1251.

Rios, A.C., and Y. Tor. 2009. Model systems: How chemical biologists study RNA. Curr. Opin. Chem. Biol. 13:660–668.