Structural and functional features of eukaryotic mRNA untranslated regions

Pesole, Graziano; Mignone, Flavio; Gissi, Carmela; Grillo, Giorgio; Licciulli, Flavio; Liuni, Sabino

doi:10.1016/s0378-1119(01)00674-6

Cited by 382 publications

(324 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…With the exception of the replication dependent histone genes mentioned above, the 3' end of the mature mRNA carries a poly(A) tail. Both untranslated regions are involved in the post-transcriptional regulation of gene expression processes, like subcellular localization, mRNA stability and translation efficiency [230,73,307,326,436]. These processes are mainly controlled by cis-acting functional elements in the UTRs, which comprise both sequence motifs and RNA structure motifs.…”

Section: Mrna Structurementioning

confidence: 99%

“…In contrast, 5'UTRs regulatory motifs might be mostly structural motifs. It is known, for example, that translation initiation is essentially controlled by RNA structures in 5'UTRs [73,326].…”

Section: Mrna Structurementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Functional RNA structures in UTRs are in general not as long as ncRNAs, since they are limited by the size of their UTRs. The average length of human UTRs is about 210 for 5'UTRs and about 1027 for 3'UTRs [326]. RNA structure motifs in UTRs can thus be expected to be relatively small, simple structures.…”

Section: Detection Of Utr Motifsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…At present, it is unclear whether large regulatory motifs such as IRES, IRE, Table 7 Important general regulatory motifs in mature eukaryotic mRNA [326]. Most regulatory elements influence initiation of translation.…”

Section: Important Regulatory Motifs In Utrs Of Mrnasmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We briefly mention a few of the best-understood examples of structurally conserved RNA motifs in viral RNAs: An IRES (internal ribosomal entry site) region is used instead of a cap to initialize translation by Picornaviridae, some Flaviviridae including Hepatitis C virus, and a small number of mRNAs, see e.g. [352,174,326]. Viral RNAs contain a large number of structured binding motifs that are essential for the viral life cycles, e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Evolutionary patterns of non-coding RNAs

Bompfünewerer

Flamm

Fried

et al. 2005

Theory in Biosciences

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A plethora of new functions of non-coding RNAs have been discovered in past few years. In fact, RNA is emerging as the central player in cellular regulation, taking on active roles in multiple regulatory layers from transcription, RNA maturation, and Manuscript January 2005RNA modification to translational regulation. Nevertheless, very little is known about the evolution of this "Modern RNA World" and its components. In this contribution we attempt to provide at least a cursory overview of the diversity of non-coding RNAs and functional RNA motifs in non-translated regions of regular messenger RNAs (mRNAs) with an emphasis on evolutionary questions. This survey is complemented by an in-depth analysis of examples from different classes of RNAs focusing mostly on their evolution in the vertebrate lineage. We present a survey of Y RNA genes in vertebrates, studies of the molecular evolution of the U7 snRNA, the snoRNAs E1/U17, E2, and E3, the Y RNA family, the let-7 microRNA family, and the mRNA-like evf-1 gene. We furthermore discuss the statistical distribution of microRNAs in metazoans, which suggests an explosive increase in the microRNA repertoire in vertebrates. The analysis of the transcription of non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) suggests that small RNAs in general are genetically mobile in the sense that their association with a hostgene (e.g. when transcribed from introns of a mRNA) can change on evolutionary time scales. The let-7 family demonstrates, that even the mode of transcription (as intron or as exon) can change among paralogous ncRNA.

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