Recognition and elimination of nonsense mRNA.
Among the different cellular surveillance mechanisms in charge to prevent production of faulty gene products, nonsense-mediated mRNA decay (NMD) represents a translation-dependent posttranscriptional process that selectively recognizes and degrades mRNAs whose open reading frame (ORF) is truncated by a premature translation termination codon (PTC, also called "nonsense codon"). In doing so, NMD protects the cell from accumulating C-terminally truncated proteins with potentially deleterious functions. Transcriptome profiling of NMD-deficient yeast, Drosophila, and human cells revealed that 3-10% of all mRNA levels are regulated (directly or indirectly) by NMD, indicating an important role of NMD in gene regulation that extends beyond quality control [J. Rehwinkel, J. Raes, E. Izaurralde, Nonsense-mediated mRNA decay: Target genes and functional diversification of effectors, Trends Biochem. Sci. 31 (2006) 639-646.[1]]. In this review, we focus on recent results from different model organisms that indicate an evolutionarily conserved mechanism for PTC identification.
Mühlemann
Oliver
O
Institute of Cell Biology, University of Berne, Baltzerstrasse 4, CH-3012 Bern, Switzerland. oliver.muehlemann@izb.unibe.ch
Eberle
Andrea B
AB
Stalder
Lukas
L
Zamudio Orozco
Rodolfo
R
D000818:Animals; D018389:Codon, Nonsense / Q000502:physiology*; D005786:Gene Expression Regulation / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D012323:RNA Processing, Post-Transcriptional; D020871:RNA Stability / Q000502:physiology*
D018389:Codon, Nonsense