Rescue of Oxidative Phosphorylation with “Allotopic” mRNA
At the third SENS conference, Dr. Samit Adhya of the Indian Institute of Chemical Biology presented a proof-of-principle for the use of an RNA import complex adapted from the parasite Leishmania to import arbitrary antisense RNA strands into mammalian mitochondria, reducing levels of a target protein by RNA interference. In a new study, Adhya’s group reports the successful use of the same technique to deliver mRNA sequences corresponding to proteins of the electron transfer chain, rescuing mitochondrial function in cells with mutations or deletions in those genes.
