Nonsense-mediated messenger RNA decay is initiated by endonucleolytic cleavage in Drosophila

David Gatfield and Elisa Izaurralde ()
Additional contact information
David Gatfield: European Molecular Biology Laboratory
Elisa Izaurralde: European Molecular Biology Laboratory

Nature, 2004, vol. 429, issue 6991, 575-578

Abstract: Abstract In eukaryotic cells, messenger RNAs harbouring premature termination codons (PTCs) are rapidly degraded by a conserved post-transcriptional mechanism referred to as nonsense-mediated mRNA decay (NMD)1,2, which prevents the synthesis of truncated proteins that could be deleterious for the cell1,2. Studies in yeast and mammals indicate that degradation by means of this pathway can occur from both the 5′ end of the message (involving decapping and 5′-to-3′ exonucleolytic digestion by XRN1) or the 3′ end (through accelerated deadenylation and exosome-mediated 3′-to-5′ decay)3,4,5,6,7,8,9. Here we show that, contrary to expectation, degradation of PTC-containing messages in Drosophila is initiated by endonucleolytic cleavage(s) in the vicinity of the nonsense codon. The resulting 5′ fragment is rapidly degraded by exonucleolytic digestion by the exosome, whereas the 3′ fragment is degraded by XRN1. This decay route is shown for several PTC-containing reporters, as well as an endogenous mRNA that is naturally regulated by NMD. We conclude that, despite conservation in the NMD machinery, PTC-containing transcripts are degraded in Drosophila by a mechanism that differs considerably from those described in yeast and mammals3,6,7.

Date: 2004
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature02559 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:nature:v:429:y:2004:i:6991:d:10.1038_nature02559

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

DOI: 10.1038/nature02559

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

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