A post-transcriptional mechanism pacing expression of neural genes with precursor cell differentiation status

Weijun Dai, Wencheng Li, Mainul Hoque, Zhuyun Li, Bin Tian () and Eugene V. Makeyev ()
Additional contact information
Weijun Dai: School of Biological Sciences, Nanyang Technological University
Wencheng Li: Biochemistry, and Molecular Genetics, Rutgers New Jersey Medical School
Mainul Hoque: Biochemistry, and Molecular Genetics, Rutgers New Jersey Medical School
Zhuyun Li: School of Biological Sciences, Nanyang Technological University
Bin Tian: Biochemistry, and Molecular Genetics, Rutgers New Jersey Medical School
Eugene V. Makeyev: School of Biological Sciences, Nanyang Technological University

Nature Communications, 2015, vol. 6, issue 1, 1-11

Abstract: Abstract Nervous system (NS) development relies on coherent upregulation of extensive sets of genes in a precise spatiotemporal manner. How such transcriptome-wide effects are orchestrated at the molecular level remains an open question. Here we show that 3′-untranslated regions (3′ UTRs) of multiple neural transcripts contain AU-rich cis-elements (AREs) recognized by tristetraprolin (TTP/Zfp36), an RNA-binding protein previously implicated in regulation of mRNA stability. We further demonstrate that the efficiency of ARE-dependent mRNA degradation declines in the neural lineage because of a decrease in the TTP protein expression mediated by the NS-enriched microRNA miR-9. Importantly, TTP downregulation in this context is essential for proper neuronal differentiation. On the other hand, inactivation of TTP in non-neuronal cells leads to dramatic upregulation of multiple NS-specific genes. We conclude that the newly identified miR-9/TTP circuitry limits unscheduled accumulation of neuronal mRNAs in non-neuronal cells and ensures coordinated upregulation of these transcripts in neurons.

Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms8576 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:6:y:2015:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms8576

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms8576

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().