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GC‐content biases in protein‐coding genes act as an “mRNA identity” feature for nuclear export
Author(s) -
Palazzo Alexander F.,
Kang Yoon Mo
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
bioessays
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.175
H-Index - 184
eISSN - 1521-1878
pISSN - 0265-9247
DOI - 10.1002/bies.202000197
Subject(s) - nuclear export signal , gene , messenger rna , nuclear gene , feature (linguistics) , gc content , rna , content (measure theory) , biology , nucleus , coding region , microbiology and biotechnology , computational biology , genetics , genome , mathematical analysis , linguistics , philosophy , mathematics
Abstract It has long been observed that human protein‐coding genes have a particular distribution of GC‐content: the 5′ end of these genes has high GC‐content while the 3′ end has low GC‐content. In 2012, it was proposed that this pattern of GC‐content could act as an mRNA identity feature that would lead to it being better recognized by the cellular machinery to promote its nuclear export. In contrast, junk RNA, which largely lacks this feature, would be retained in the nucleus and targeted for decay. Now two recent papers have provided evidence that GC‐content does promote the nuclear export of many mRNAs in human cells.