title: The salicylic acid dependent and independent effects of NMD in plants.
abstract: In eukaryotes, nonsense-mediated mRNA decay (NMD) targets aberrant and selected non-aberrant mRNAs for destruction. A recent screen for mRNAs showing increased abundance in Arabidopsis NMD-deficient mutants revealed that most are associated with the salicylic acid (SA)-mediated defense pathway. mRNAs with conserved peptide upstream open reading frames (CpuORFs or CuORFs) are hugely overrepresented among the smaller class of NMD-regulated transcripts not associated with SA. Here we show that the common phenotypes observed in Arabidopsis NMD mutants are SA-dependent, whereas the upregulation of CpuORF-containing transcripts in NMD mutants is independent of SA. We speculate that CpuORFs could allow the conditional targeting of mRNAs for destruction using the NMD pathway.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Plant Sciences, Faculty of Biological Sciences, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK.
authors.forename: Samantha
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Rayson
authors.forename: Mary
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ashworth
authors.forename: Marta
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: de Torres Zabala
authors.forename: Murray
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Grant
authors.forename: Brendan
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Davies
mesh_terms: D017360:Arabidopsis / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism*; D029681:Arabidopsis Proteins / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D059365:Nonsense Mediated mRNA Decay / Q000235:genetics*; D016366:Open Reading Frames / Q000235:genetics; D012333:RNA, Messenger / Q000235:genetics; D020156:Salicylic Acid / Q000378:metabolism*
chemical_list: D029681:Arabidopsis Proteins; D012333:RNA, Messenger; D020156:Salicylic Acid