WIKIMEDIA COMMONS, TOM ELLENBERGER
Observing single molecules in yeast cells in real time, researchers have discovered that the promoter regions of two genes involved in the cell cycle not only act to encourage transcription; they also initiate a self-destruct timer that controls when the resulting messenger RNA (mRNA) molecules are degraded. The results, published today (December 22) in Cell, provide some of the first clues regarding how cells manage their mRNA levels, and could have implications for controlling cell division in cancer.
“Our findings indicate that genes making proteins whose levels must be carefully controlled contain promoter regions that sentence their mRNA molecules to death even as the mRNA is being born,” senior author Robert Singer of the Gruss Lipper Biophotonics Center and Albert Einstein College of Medicine of ...
