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Looking at mRNA decay pathways through the window of molecular evolution
Michael R Culbertson1, Peter F Leeds
1Robert M Bock Laboratories, 1525 Linden Drive, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA. mrculber@facstaff.wisc.edu
Current Opinion in Genetics & Development
|April 4, 2003
Abstract:
In eukaryotes, mRNAs are monitored for errors in gene expression by RNA surveillance where untranslatable mRNAs are selectively degraded by the nonsense-mediated mRNA decay (NMD) pathway. Depending on the organism, three to seven genes are required for NMD. Besides RNA surveillance, the genes required for NMD serve a second purpose by controlling the overall abundance of a substantial fraction of the transcriptome.