Coupling mRNA Synthesis and Decay

Abstract

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.

—Ecclesiastes 1:9 (New International Version)

Posttranscriptional regulation of gene expression has an important role in defining the phenotypic characteristics of an organism. Well-defined steps in mRNA metabolism that occur in the nucleus—capping, splicing, and polyadenylation—are mechanistically linked to the process of transcription. Recent evidence suggests another link between RNA polymerase II (Pol II) and a posttranscriptional process that occurs in the cytoplasm—mRNA decay. This conclusion appears to represent a conundrum. How could mRNA synthesis in the nucleus and mRNA decay in the cytoplasm be mechanistically linked? After a brief overview of mRNA processing, we will review the recent evidence for transcription-coupled mRNA decay and the possible involvement of Snf1, the Saccharomyces cerevisiae ortholog of AMP-activated protein kinase, in this process.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This work was supported by research grant GM26079 from the National Institutes of Health.

We thank the reviewers for their critical insights.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Katherine A. Braun

Katherine Braun received her B.S. in biochemistry from the University of California at Davis in 1993 and her Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Iowa in 1998. Her work as a graduate student and a postdoctoral fellow at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory focused on understanding the mechanism of DNA replication in eukaryotes. In subsequent postdoctoral work at Fred Hutchinson Research Center she studied cell cycle regulation in yeast. Since joining Ted Young's laboratory at the University of Washington as a research scientist in 2010, she has studied the regulation of gene expression in response to changing nutrient conditions in yeast with a focus on the coregulation of transcription and mRNA decay.

Elton T. Young

Elton (Ted) Young received his B.S. in chemistry from the University of Colorado in 1962 and his Ph. D. in biophysics from the California Institute of Technology in 1967. His work as a graduate student identified circular DNA molecules as intermediate in the replication of bacteriophage lambda DNA. His postdoctoral work at the University of Geneva, Switzerland, under the auspices of a NATO Fellowship, developed in vitro synthesis of bacteriophage T4 early enzymes as an assay for mRNA synthesis and its regulation. He joined the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Washington in 1969 and is currently Professor Emeritus. Beginning in the late 1970s his research interests turned to eukaryotes and specifically to the function and transcriptional regulation of the alcohol dehydrogenase genes of baker's yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was an editor of Molecular and Cellular Biology and a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Biological Chemistry.