The exosome is a multi-subunit 3Ј-5Ј exonucleolytic complex that is conserved in structure and function in all eukaryotes studied to date. The complex is present in both the nucleus and cytoplasm, where it continuously works to ensure adequate quantities and quality of RNAs by facilitating normal RNA processing and turnover, as well as by participating in more complex RNA quality-control mechanisms. Recent progress in the field has convincingly shown that the nucleolytic activity of the exosome is maintained by only two exonuclease co-factors, one of which is also an endonuclease. The additional association of the exosome with RNA-helicase and poly(A) polymerase activities results in a flexible molecular machine that is capable of dealing with the multitude of cellular RNA substrates that are found in eukaryotic cells. Interestingly, the same basic set of enzymatic activities is found in prokaryotic cells, which might therefore illustrate the evolutionary origin of the eukaryotic system. In this Commentary, we compare the structural and functional characteristics of the eukaryotic and prokaryotic RNA-degradation systems, with an emphasis on some of the functional networks in which the RNA exosome participates in eukaryotes.Key words: Exosome function, Exosome structure, RNA exosome The existence of two similar ring-shaped RNA degradation complexes in bacteria (RNase PH and PNPase) suggests that one was derived from the other via gene duplication or lateral gene transfer. However, phylogenetic analysis shows that RNase PH is more closely related to the second catalytic domain of PNPase than the two domains of PNPase are to each other, suggesting that the proteins co-evolved from a common primordial single-domain enzyme (Leszczyniecka et al., 2004). That enzyme also evolved into two archaeal (Rrp41 and Rrp42) and six eukaryotic genes (Rrp41, Rrp42, Rrp45, Rrp46, Rrp43 and Mtr3). In fact, the eukaryotic genes can be organised into two groups based on their similarity to either archaeal Rrp41 (eukaryotic Rrp41, Rrp46 and Mtr3) or Rrp42 (eukaryotic Rrp42, Rrp43 and Rrp45) (Lorentzen et al., 2005). This indicates that the eukaryotic exosome evolved from a single RNase PH-type ancestor by several subsequent gene duplication events, the first of which produced Rrp41 and Rrp42, which later diversified into the six individual proteins. The finding that the cap proteins are present in both eukaryotes and archaea also indicates common ancestry. However, a strict requirement of the cap for stability of the exosome core seems to be a development that is specific to eukaryotes (Buttner et al., 2005;Liu et al., 2006;Lorentzen et al., 2005).
The exosome core is catalytically inactive in yeast and humansThe homo-hexameric RNase PH has three phosphorolytic active sites on each side of the ring, whereas in PNPase, this is reduced to a single active site per subunit (three active sites per complex) (Ishii et al., 2003;Symmons et al., 2000) (Fig. 1). This is reminiscent of the archaeal exosome, where the Rrp41-Rrp42 heterodimers e...