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Updated: Dec 21, 2025

An Optogenetic Method to Control and Analyze Gene Expression Patterns in Cell-to-cell Interactions
Published on: March 22, 2018
uORF Shuffling Fine-Tunes Gene Expression at a Deep Level of the Process
1Synthetic Genomics Research Group, RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Science, 1-7-22 Suehirocho, Tsurumi-ku, Yokohama, Kanagawa 230-0045, Japan.
Abstract:
Upstream open reading frames (uORFs) are present in the 5' leader sequences (or 5' untranslated regions) upstream of the protein-coding main ORFs (mORFs) in eukaryotic polycistronic mRNA. It is well known that a uORF negatively affects translation of the mORF. Emerging ribosome profiling approaches have revealed that uORFs themselves, as well as downstream mORFs, can be translated. However, it has also been revealed that plants can fine-tune gene expression by modulating uORF-mediated regulation in some situations. This article reviews several proposed mechanisms that enable genes to escape from uORF-mediated negative regulation and gives insight into the application of uORF-mediated regulation for precisely controlling gene expression.
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