Construction, structure and dynamics of post-transcriptional regulatory network directed by RNA-binding proteins

Gene expression is a highly controlled process which is known to occur at several levels in eukaryotic organisms. Although messenger RNAs have been traditionally viewed as passive molecules in the pathway from transcription to translation, there is increasing evidence that their metabolism is controlled by a class of proteins called RNA-binding proteins (RBPs). In this chapter, we provide an overview of the recent developments in our understanding of the repertoire of RBPs across diverse model systems and discuss the approaches currently available for the construction of post-transcriptional networks governed by them. We also present the first analysis of the network properties of a post-transcriptional system in a model eukaryote using currently available data and discuss the implications of understanding the dynamic properties of this important class of regulatory molecules as more data detailing their dynamic, spatial and tissue-specific maps across diverse model systems accumulates. We argue that such developments would not only allow us to gain a deeper understanding of regulation at a level that has been under-appreciated over the past decades, but would also allow us to use the newly developed high-throughput approaches to interrogate the prevalence of these phenomena in different states and thereby study their relevance to physiology and disease across organisms.