{"id":23990,"date":"2024-06-05T07:14:55","date_gmt":"2024-06-05T01:44:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=23990"},"modified":"2025-10-14T11:07:23","modified_gmt":"2025-10-14T05:37:23","slug":"neo-protein","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/neo-protein\/","title":{"rendered":"A newfound protein called &#8216;Neo&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>About Neo:<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Discovery of &#8216;Neo&#8217;: <\/strong>It was reported by researchers led by Stephen Tang and Samuel Sternberg in a 2023 preprint paper on <strong>bio Rxiv <\/strong>while working on <i><strong>Klebsiella pneumoniae<\/strong><\/i><strong>.\u00a0<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Mechanism: <\/strong>Bacteria defend themselves from viral infection (against bacteriophages) using diverse immune systems, many of which sense and target foreign nucleic acids. Defense-associated reverse transcriptase (DRT) systems are one of them.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>In the <strong>DRT-2 system<\/strong>, the bacteria undergo de novo gene synthesis via rolling-circle reverse transcription (RT) of a non-coding <a href=\"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/upsc-exam\/rna\/\" target=\"_blank\">RNA<\/a> (ncRNA).\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>In uninfected bacterial cells, the ncRNA and RT enzyme lead to the synthesis of a repetitive single-stranded cDNA.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>The presence of phage triggers the second-strand cDNA synthesis, leading to the production of<strong> long double-stranded <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/upsc-exam\/dna\/\" target=\"_blank\">DNA<\/a>.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>This double-strand cDNA generates messenger RNAs that encode a stop codon-less, <strong>never-ending open-reading frame <\/strong>(<strong>neo<\/strong>) whose translation (neo protein) causes potent growth arrest (cell dormancy) of <a href=\"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/upsc-exam\/bacteria\/\" target=\"_blank\">bacteria<\/a>. It protects the larger bacterial population from the spread of phage.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Significance in Biotechnology and Medicine:<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li>It represents a potential <strong>biotechnological tool<\/strong> for controlling viral infections.<\/li>\n<li>Retroelements in the <strong>human genome<\/strong> and <strong>bacterial reverse transcriptases<\/strong> have a common evolutionary history as well as share functional mechanisms.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>Bacterial reverse transcriptases, believed to be the <strong>precursors <\/strong>of their <strong>eukaryotic counterparts,<\/strong> exhibit analogous mechanisms.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Reverse transcriptase:\u00a0<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>The ability of cells to create <strong>DNA copies from RNA<\/strong> is called r<strong>everse transcription<\/strong>. It is performed by the enzyme called <strong>reverse transcriptase.\u00a0<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Reverse transcriptase, discovered by<strong> Howard Temin <\/strong>and <strong>David Baltimore<\/strong> in <strong>1970<\/strong>, has revolutionised research methods in molecular biology and is crucial in studying and managing RNA viruses like <strong>HIV.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Reverse transcriptase is used in molecular biology to<strong> clone genes<\/strong>, perform <a href=\"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/upsc-exam\/polymerase-chain-reaction\/\" target=\"_blank\">PCR<\/a>, and analyse genomes.\u00a0<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>It is also used in diagnostics to <strong>detect <\/strong>and <strong>quantify viral loads<\/strong>, such as in the case of <strong>SARS-2. <\/strong>It also has helped track the virus\u2019s spread, paving the way for surveillance, better public healthcare, and vaccine development.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h3>Q1. What is a DNA?<\/h3>\n<p>DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid) is a molecule that carries genetic information, responsible for transmitting hereditary traits from parents to offspring. It is a double helix structure composed of nucleotides with four nitrogenous bases: adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Source: <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thehindu.com\/sci-tech\/science\/klebsiella-pneumoniae-central-dogma-new-genes-reverse-transcriptase\/article68249504.ece\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">The bacteria that write new genes to cope with infections<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Neo&#8221; proteins are synthesised from concatenated cDNA, generated via a unique mechanism involving reverse transcriptase (RT) and rolling-circle reverse transcription (RCRT).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":23991,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-23990","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","8":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23990\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}