Beyond quality control: The role of nonsense-mediated mRNA decay (NMD) in regulating gene expression

Nonsense-mediated mRNA decay (NMD) has traditionally been described as a quality control system that rids cells of aberrant mRNAs with crippled protein coding potential. However, transcriptome-wide profiling of NMD deficient cells identified a plethora of seemingly intact mRNAs coding for functional...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Seminars in cell & developmental biology 2018-03, Vol.75, p.78-87
Main Authors: Nasif, Sofia, Contu, Lara, Mühlemann, Oliver
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
mRNA surveillance
Neuronal differentiation
NMD
Posttranscriptional gene regulation
RNA turnover
SMG1
SMG5
SMG6
SMG7
Spermatogenesis
Stress response
Unfolded protein response
UPF1
UPF2
UPF3A
UPF3B
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Nonsense-mediated mRNA decay (NMD) has traditionally been described as a quality control system that rids cells of aberrant mRNAs with crippled protein coding potential. However, transcriptome-wide profiling of NMD deficient cells identified a plethora of seemingly intact mRNAs coding for functional proteins as NMD targets. This led to the view that NMD constitutes an additional post-transcriptional layer of gene expression control involved in the regulation of many different biological pathways. Here, we review our current knowledge about the role of NMD in embryonic development and tissue-specific cell differentiation. We further summarize how NMD contributes to balancing of the integrated stress response and to cellular homeostasis of splicing regulators and NMD factors through auto-regulatory feedback loops. In addition, we discuss recent evidence that suggests a role for NMD as an innate immune response against several viruses. Altogether, NMD appears to play an important role in a broad spectrum of biological pathways, many of which still remain to be discovered.
ISSN:1084-9521
1096-3634
DOI:10.1016/j.semcdb.2017.08.053