Regulatory RNA is turning out to be a major player in some of a cell’s most vital activities.

“Anything DNA can do, RNA can do better,” was the slogan on a slide shown by one biologist, Susan Gottesman of the National Cancer Institute, at a symposium at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island last week.

Scientists estimate that more than one-third of human genes are under evolutionary pressure to maintain sequences in their messenger RNA’s that can be controlled by regulatory RNA’s.