Role of Huntington’s Disease Protein in Post-Transcriptional Gene Regulatory Pathways

This chapter will focus on the potential role that misregulation of post-transcriptional control of gene expression could have on the development or progression of Huntington’s disease (HD). Every cell in our bodies possesses the same genetic material, and yet every cell is not the same. We also all know that the tremendous diversity of biology present within each individual is accomplished through unique patterns of gene expression on a cell-by-cell basis. Of course the timing and amounts of gene expression also contribute to this diversity of phenotype and function. The complexity, however, goes even deeper. Within individual genes there is information to produce multiple different messenger RNAs and often multiple different proteins, each with different functional implications. We see then, that the multi-step process of gene expression using a number of genes only modestly greater than what is found in certain species of ciliates is capable of generating a being of vastly more complicated biology. With this complexity in mind, it is therefore possible that small defects at any of the steps of gene expression could have deleterious consequences on the identity, ability to appropriately respond to environmental cues, and on the survival of cells.