[Degradation of eukaryotic transcripts. Role and regulation of tristetraprolin activity]

The kinetics of transcripts turnover is a very important aspect of the regulation of the amount of newly synthesized proteins. Transcripts can serve as a template for protein synthesis as long as they remain in the cytoplasm, bound to the ribosomes. Degradation of mRNAs effectively influences quantity of transcripts in this pool. The process of mRNA degradation, similarly to transcription, is precisely regulated, mainly by proteins which interact with mRNA. These proteins are responsible both for transcripts stabilization and degradation. In this article we have summarized known pathways of mRNA degradation. We have also reviewed the present state of knowledge on tristetraprolin, one of the best characterized proteins that takes part in the transcripts turnover.