For many years, scientists believed that transfer RNAs are simple shuttles that bring amino acids to ribosomes. But a growing number of studies find that they can alter important cellular processes by influencing gene expression, including helping cancers grow. Now, researchers have found that tRNAs can speed up or slow breast cancer metastasis by accelerating the translation of growth genes.
In a study published in Nature Cancer on December 12, a team from the Rockefeller University and the University of California, San Francisco reports that tumor cells exhibit elevated levels of tRNAs that are required to assemble growth-promoting proteins. And in a twist, slightly different tRNAs that carry the same amino acid can have opposing effects on metastasis.
“It’s truly fascinating how cancer cells can manipulate the genetic code to their own advantage,” says Hannah Benisty, a cancer biologist at the Centre for Genomic Research in Spain who was not ...
