The amazing web of post-transcriptional gene control: The sum of small changes can make for significant consequences
- 1Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, School of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York 14642, USA
- 2Center for RNA Biology, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York 14642, USA
- Corresponding author: lynne_maquat{at}urmc.rochester.edu
This extract was created in the absence of an abstract.
It is now well established that eukaryotic cells respond to their changing milieu through coordinate transcriptional and post-transcriptional mechanisms. Post-transcriptional mechanisms include those that tune the expression of a battery of genes encoding proteins of diverse function, if not mRNAs of diverse structure, via targeted mRNA decay. As recently as 10 years ago, a change in mRNA abundance that was less than five- to 10-fold was deemed by many to be physiologically insignificant. However, an appreciation for the importance of small changes has grown as a consequence of new methodologies that are sufficiently sensitive and sophisticated to quantitate small and concomitant changes to the abundance of groups of mRNAs.
Only relatively recently—since the inception of technological advances in transcriptome deep-sequencing and RT-coupled to real-time PCR that enable scientists to reliably measure changes in RNA abundance that are less than 1.5-fold and that typify groups of RNAs—has the existence of a …
