Trans-acting proteins regulating mRNA maturation, stability and translation in trypanosomatids

In trypanosomatids, alterations in gene expression in response to intrinsic or extrinsic signals are achieved through post-transcriptional mechanisms. In the last 20 years, research has concentrated on defining the responsible cis-elements in the untranslated regions of several regulated mRNAs. More recently, the focus has shifted towards the identification of RNA-binding proteins that act as trans-acting factors. Trypanosomatids have a large number of predicted RNA-binding proteins of which the vast majority have no orthologues in other eukaryotes. Several RNA-binding proteins have been shown to bind and/or regulate the expression of a group of mRNAs that code for functionally related proteins, indicating the possible presence of co-regulated mRNA cohorts.