Making sense of nonsense in yeast

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Messenger RNA (mRNA) degradation is a process that plays an importantrole in the regulation of gene expression and can be linked to translation. Study of the nonsense-mediated mRNA decay pathway has greatly aided our understanding of the link between these processes. Evidence indicates that this pathway regulates the abundance of both aberrant and wild-type transcripts. Factors involved in this pathway have been identified and recent results indicate that they might also be involved in modulating translation. Here, we discuss the mechanism of nonsense-mediated mRNA decay in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae and the potential role that this pathway can have on the regulation of gene expression.

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    M. J. Rulz-Echevarria, K. Czaplinski and S.W. Peltz are at the Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, 675 Hoes Lane, Piscataway, NJ 08854, USA.

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