Ribonuclease function of APE1

生命系统中最基本的活动之一是将它们的遗传信息（DNA）表达成蛋白质，这种分子机器执行维持生物体生存的大部分生物功能。DNA复制成蛋白质分两步进行：首先，DNA被复制成mRNA（信使核糖核酸，化学上与DNA相似）；其次，mRNA被用作制造特定蛋白质的模板。对于一个给定的基因，蛋白质的数量因此取决于mRNA的数量。由于mRNA丰度的变化而导致的许多蛋白质的过量或不足可导致疾病，如癌症。mrna的丰度高度依赖于其降解的速度。因此，了解mRNA降解机制的工作原理对于增加我们对分子生物学的基础科学知识以及揭示一些人类疾病的发病机制至关重要。

One of the most fundamental activities in living systems is to express their genetic information (DNA) into proteins, the molecular machines that carry out most of the biological functions that keep an organism alive. The copying of DNA into proteins occurs in two steps: first, DNA is copied into mRNA (messenger ribonucleic acid; chemically similar to DNA); second, mRNA is used as a template to make specific proteins. For a given gene, the amount of protein is therefore dependent on the amount of mRNA. An excess or shortage of many proteins due to changes in the abundance of mRNA can lead to diseases, such as cancer. The abundance of mRNAs is highly dependent on the rate of its degradation. Therefore, an understanding of how the mRNA degradation machinery works is critical for increasing our basic scientific knowledge of molecular biology, as well as for revealing information on the pathogenesis of some human diseases.