 A. M. Weiner

A. M. Weiner is a credited coauthor, with Yuan Zhuang, of a 1986 experimental study of RNA splicing. The study tested whether base pairing between U1 small nuclear RNA and a precursor RNA's splice donor site contributes directly to recognition. A compensating change in one partner could rescue a change in the other, supporting a specific molecular interaction.^[ref]

The reasoning goes beyond observing that a damaged RNA fails to undergo RNA splicing. In an original schematic example, imagine a compatible pair of sequence features $(a,b)$. Either $(a^{\prime },b)$ or $(a,b^{\prime })$ disrupts their interaction, while $(a^{\prime },b^{\prime })$ restores compatibility. Recovery in the double change supports a pairing explanation more specifically than failure after either single change. This is the logic of a suppressor mutation, not a claim that the compensating molecule restores every other property of the original system.

The paper also reported unequal rescue at two splice donor sites. Thus restored nucleic acid complementarity did not invariably restore productive RNA splicing. Recognition by U1 snRNP has to cooperate with the rest of the spliceosome, making this experiment informative about both a required interaction and its limits.^[ref]