Rice Protein Builds RNA From Scratch, Upending a Textbook Rule

For decades, molecular biology has taught that RNA is a copyist. To make a strand of ribonucleic acid, a cell needs a template, usually DNA, and an enzyme called a polymerase that reads it and writes out the matching sequence. A new paper from a lab at Westlake University in Hangzhou, China, argues that this rule may not be universal, at least not for one plant protein.

The work comes from the laboratory of Shi Yigong, a structural biologist and president of Westlake University, and was published in the journal Vita. According to an account carried by Science and Technology Daily, the team found that a rice protein called OsNTP4 can build RNA from scratch in a test tube. The protein did not need a template and did not need a pre-existing RNA strand to get started.

That is a striking claim. Template-free RNA synthesis is not unknown in biology, but it is rare and usually belongs to specialized enzymes in unusual contexts. Finding it in a common crop plant, and in a protein studied for other reasons, suggests the reaction may be more widespread than textbooks allow. The team reports that two other proteins, rice OsNTP10 and Arabidopsis AtURT1, showed similar activity, hinting that the ability is shared across plant species rather than confined to one.

The announcement was brief and technical, and outside researchers have not yet had time to weigh in publicly. Independent replication will matter, because the finding touches a core assumption about how genetic information flows. If plant cells can generate RNA without a template, the implications range from how crops respond to stress to how scientists think about the origin of life, when the first RNA molecules may have assembled without a DNA blueprint to copy.

Shi is one of China’s best-known life scientists, known for structural work on proteins and for his role in building Westlake into a research university. His lab’s turn toward plant RNA metabolism is notable in itself, a sign that the country’s top structural biology groups are reaching into new questions.

The practical side is still speculative. RNA is central to how cells pass on genetic instructions, regulate genes and build proteins. A plant protein that can start RNA chains on its own could, in principle, give a cell a way to respond quickly to change without waiting on DNA. But turning that idea into agricultural or medical use is years away, and the paper’s immediate contribution is a puzzle for other labs to test.

For now, the story is a reminder that the central dogma, the idea that information flows from DNA to RNA to protein, describes the main road but not every path. A rice protein that writes RNA without a template is the kind of result that sends graduate students back to the bench and textbook authors back to their drafts.