Evolution and Biological Roles of Alternative 3'UTRs

More than half of human genes use alternative cleavage and polyadenylation to generate alternative 3' untranslated region (3'UTR) isoforms. Most efforts have focused on transcriptome-wide mapping of alternative 3'UTRs and on the question of how 3'UTR isoform ratios may be regulated. However, it remains less clear why alternative 3'UTRs have evolved and what biological roles they play. This review summarizes our current knowledge of the functional roles of alternative 3'UTRs, including mRNA localization, mRNA stability, and translational efficiency. Recent work suggests that alternative 3'UTRs may also enable the formation of protein-protein interactions to regulate protein localization or to diversify protein functions. These recent findings open an exciting research direction for the investigation of new biological roles of alternative 3'UTRs.