The enzymes and control of eukaryotic mRNA turnover
Roy Parker1
& Haiwei Song2, 3
1
Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology and Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of Arizona, 1007 E. Lowell Street, Tucson, Arizona 85721-0106, USA.
2
Laboratory of Macromolecular Structure, Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology, 30 Medical Drive, Singapore 117609.
3
Department of Biological Sciences, National University of Singapore, 14 Science Drive 4, Singapore 117543.
The degradation of eukaryotic mRNAs plays important roles in the modulation of gene expression, quality control of mRNA biogenesis and antiviral defenses. In the past five years, many of the enzymes involved in this process have been identified and mechanisms that modulate their activities have begun to be identified. In this review, we describe the enzymes of mRNA degradation and their properties. We highlight that there are a variety of enzymes with different specificities, suggesting that individual nucleases act on distinct subpopulations of transcripts within the cell. In several cases, translation factors that bind mRNA inhibit these nucleases. In addition, recent work has begun to identify distinct mRNP complexes that recruit the nucleases to transcripts through different mRNA-interacting proteins. These properties and complexes suggest multiple mechanisms by which mRNA degradation could be regulated.
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