FIND ARTICLE

MECHANISMS OF RNA DEGRADATION IN YEAST AND MAMMALIAN CELLS

RNA degradation in yeast and mammalian cells take place in cytoplasm, nucleus and mitochondria. Degradation of transcripts with a premature termination codon or without stop codon results in repression of aberrant protein synthesis. The mRNA decay pathway, which degrades mRNAs containing a stem-loop structure has been discovered and characterized in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Eukaryotic transcripts with AU-rich elements in their 3'-untranslated region have a very short half-life. These elements regulate mRNA level in cells.

DEGRADATION OF TRUNCATED mRNA IN EUKARYOTIC AND PROKARYOTIC CELLS

Cells have evolved mechanism to get rid of nonfunctional or potentially deleterious proteins that are coded by mRNA with premature translation termination or mRNA without stop codon. The pathway of degradation of such mRNA have been described in mammals, flies, nematodes, yeast and plants. The degradation steps as well as factors involved in are not identical in different species. The general way of recognition of aberrant transcripts depends on spatial relationship between ribosome components and ribonucleoproteins bound to the 3’UTR sequence.

The Editorial Board
Andrzej Łukaszyk - przewodniczący, Zofia Bielańska-Osuchowska, Szczepan Biliński, Mieczysław Chorąży, Aleksander Koj, Włodzimierz Korochoda, Leszek Kuźnicki, Aleksandra Stojałowska, Lech Wojtczak

Editorial address:
Katedra i Zakład Histologii i Embriologii Uniwersytetu Medycznego w Poznaniu, ul. Święcickiego 6, 60-781 Poznań, tel. +48 61 8546453, fax. +48 61 8546440, email: mnowicki@ump.edu.pl

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