title: Selenocysteine incorporation: A trump card in the game of mRNA decay.
abstract: The incorporation of the 21st amino acid, selenocysteine (Sec), occurs on mRNAs that harbor in-frame stop codons because the Sec-tRNA(Sec) recognizes a UGA codon. This sets up an intriguing interplay between translation elongation, translation termination and the complex machinery that marks mRNAs that contain premature termination codons for degradation, leading to nonsense mediated mRNA decay (NMD). In this review we discuss the intricate and complex relationship between this key quality control mechanism and the process of Sec incorporation in mammals.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Rutgers-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, 675 Hoes Ln, Piscataway, NJ 08854, USA.
authors.forename: Sumangala P
authors.initials: SP
authors.lastname: Shetty
authors.affiliation: Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Rutgers-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, 675 Hoes Ln, Piscataway, NJ 08854, USA. Electronic address: paul.copeland@rutgers.edu.
authors.forename: Paul R
authors.initials: PR
authors.lastname: Copeland
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D003062:Codon; D006801:Humans; D059365:Nonsense Mediated mRNA Decay; D010445:Peptide Elongation Factors / Q000502:physiology; D014176:Protein Biosynthesis; D016601:RNA-Binding Proteins / Q000502:physiology; D017279:Selenocysteine / Q000378:metabolism*
chemical_list: D003062:Codon; D010445:Peptide Elongation Factors; D016601:RNA-Binding Proteins; C577859:SECIS-binding protein 2, mouse; D017279:Selenocysteine
keywords: NMD; Selenocysteine; mRNA decay