How diet controls RNA maturation

Particularly sensitive to chemical modifications, mRNAs are molecules responsible for transmitting the information encoded in our genome, allowing for the synthesis of proteins. Two teams have focused on a specific type of chemical modification - called methylation - of mRNA molecules in the small worm Caenorhabditis elegans. They found that methylation on a particular sequence of an mRNA leads to its degradation and that this control mechanism depends on the worm's diet.