RNA articles from across Nature Portfolio

In this Review, the authors summarize our current understanding of nuclear pre-mRNA and mRNA decay pathways. They describe how aberrantly processed mRNAs are targeted for decay in the nucleus and how this process is regulated to finely control gene expression.

Here, Schwartz, Bravo, and Ahsan et al. show how multi-subunit fusion proteins are arranged around a crRNA in a type III CRISPR-Cas effector to cleave target RNA. Structures and molecular dynamics of this complex show three distinct active sites that can be used for programmable RNA cleavage.

How RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) regulate gene expression via effectors of RNA processing is unclear. Here, the authors dissect the effector interface of an essential RBP, Unkempt, and investigate its contribution to translational control in cells.

Using human iPSC-derived and mouse neurons, this study demonstrates that mRNA transport on lysosome-related vesicles is critical for the maintenance of axonal homeostasis and that its failure causes axonal degeneration.

RNA localization is key to regulating cellular function but is challenging to measure in an unbiased manner. Now a combination of enol-masked acylating probes with a bioorthogonal esterase to locally unmask them provides a non-radical RNA proximity labelling platform—termed BAP-seq—that enables the generation of high-resolution spatial maps of RNA.

Biomolecular condensates are recognized for their ability to compartmentalize the cytoplasm without bounding membranes, but the degree to which they organize the cytoplasm has not been clear. A new study reveals that condensates at a scale of 100 nm are responsible for the organization of at least 18% of the cytoplasmic proteome.

Activation of innate immunity has been linked to the progression of type 1 diabetes. A study now shows that overexpression of METTL3, a writer protein of the m⁶A machinery that modifies mRNA, restrains interferon-stimulated genes when expressed in pancreatic β-cells, identifying it as a promising therapeutic target.

Interactions between RNA and RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) define the fate and function of every RNA molecule. We present TREX, or targeted RNase H-mediated extraction of crosslinked RBPs, an efficient and accurate method to unbiasedly reveal the protein interactors of specific regions of RNAs isolated from living cells.

sc-SPORT offers a way to probe RNA structure at the single-cell level. It reveals cell-to-cell heterogeneity in RNA folding.

SRI-41315 is a small molecule that enhances premature read-through of the stop codon by triggering the degradation of the translation termination factor eRF1. Cryo-EM structures and biochemical analyses reveal how SRI-41315 acts as a molecular glue between eRF1 and the decoding center of ribosomes, leading to increased recognition of the cryptic stop codon and eRF1 degradation.