Protein families and RNA recognition

This minireview series examines the structural principles underlying the biological function of RNA-binding proteins. The structural work of the last decade has elucidated the structures of essentially all the major RNA-binding protein families; it has also demonstrated how RNA recognition takes place. The ribosome structures have further integrated this knowledge into principles for the assembly of complex ribonucleoproteins. Structural and biochemical work has revealed unexpectedly that several RNA-binding proteins bind to other proteins in addition to RNA or instead of RNA. This tremendous increase in the structural knowledge has expanded not only our understanding of the RNA recognition principle, but has also provided new insight into the biological function of these proteins and has helped to design better experiments to understand their biological roles.