Editing independent effects of ADARs on the miRNA/siRNA pathways

Adenosine deaminases acting on RNA (ADARs) are best known for altering the coding sequences of mRNA through RNA editing, as in the GluR-B Q/R site. ADARs have also been shown to affect RNA interference (RNAi) and microRNA processing by deamination of specific adenosines to inosine. Here, we show that ADAR proteins can affect RNA processing independently of their enzymatic activity. We show that ADAR2 can modulate the processing of mir-376a2 independently of catalytic RNA editing activity. In addition, in a Drosophila assay for RNAi deaminase-inactive ADAR1 inhibits RNAi through the siRNA pathway. These results imply that ADAR1 and ADAR2 have biological functions as RNA-binding proteins that extend beyond editing per se and that even genomically encoded ADARs that are catalytically inactive may have such functions

An Introduction to Corrosion Mechanisms and Models

This chapter begins by introducing a series of corrosion mechanisms. It then discusses the principal modeling techniques used to represent and simulate these systems from the molecular perspective. The subsections in the chapter present a brief overview of contemporary approaches. As the brief survey that is made of the corrosion mechanisms reveals, there remain many more scientific and engineering problems that can be tackled via molecular modeling approaches. The combination of modern developments in computational architectures, algorithms, and molecular modeling approaches with the age-old problems presented by corrosion science (as well as emerging problems that develop as both existing and new materials are pushed to greater extremes) will no doubt continue to increase the application of these techniques to the field of corrosion science