(The following is a slight adaptation of this essay. Readers may post questions and/or comments there as well as here.) As this series of essays has explained, the polyadenylation of messenger RNAs is a vital aspect of gene expression in eukaryotic cells (and a not-so-unimportant facet of RNA metabolism in other contexts). Polyadenylation is mediated by a sizeable complex that includes various RNA-binding proteins, nucleases, and other interesting activities. Genetic studies in yeast indicate that virtually every subunit of the core complex is essential - for viability and for pre-mRNA processing and polyadenylation in vitro and in vivo. (This review is freely available and serves as a good starting point for readers who wish to explore the subject further.) Biochemical and/or immunological depletion studies reveal a similar scenario in mammals, and a less-expansive set of studies suggests that a similar rule of thumb will apply in plants. The bottom line of all of this is that almost all of the subunits of the polyadenylation complex seem to be essential - remove one, and the complex cannot function. In the vernacular of a proponent of intelligent design, the polyadenylation complex would seem to be irreducibly complex.
It is in this context that the recently-completed genome of the parasitic organism Giardia lamblia enters the fray. Last year, the complete sequence of G. lamblia, some 12 million base pairs, was determined and analyzed. The authors of the study published in Science noted a number of interesting things - a preponderance of genes encoding protein kinases, evidence for substantial horizontal gene flow from bacteria and archaebacteria, and a streamlined core gene expression machinery (transcription and RNA processing). This streamlining is especially notable in the case of the polyadenylation machinery. Remarkably, of all the subunits in the yeast complex, genes for only three* can be found in G. lamblia (see the figure that follows this paragraph - adapted from Fig. 1 of Morrison et al.).
