Inteins!

I recently visited Dr. Paul Masters' lab at the Wadsworth Center in Albany, NY and he asked if I'd ever heard of "inteins." Now, I've heard some great [relatively] new terms science to date, including-- "interactome," "reactome," and "in silico," and I've made a bit of fun of each-- so, the term "intein" initially received the skeptical brow. However, after Dr. Masters told me that inteins are a self-"splicing" component of proteins that are not only capable of extricating themselves and leaving behind the rest of the protein (aptly termed the extein, go figure), but ALSO that they have a unique enzymatic function after they've spliced themselves away from the original protein. This unique function seems to usually be that of a "homing endonuclease" which then goes onto open up other genes and insert the DNA that encodes the intein part of the protein therein! This is, of course, after I looked it up:

This is a database of intein information, including known inteins sorted by species:

http://www.neb.com/neb/inteins.html

It's interesting to note that in a lot of the more "simple" organisms, inteins seem to be pretty important enzymes--like polymerases, helicases, ATPases, and cell division control proteins. Also interestingly, D. melanogaster and C. elegans don't seem to have any inteins. This may make sense, as many sources describe inteins as being very "primitive" parasitic elements.

Go to pubmed and look up inteins and see how absolutely crazy it is to think that we'll ever figure out how the cell *really* works!