In the January 1st issue of G&D, Drs. Thomas Mullen and William Marzluff (UNC Chapel Hill) lend new insight into the degradation of mammalian histone mRNA.
Histone mRNA is rapidly degraded at the end of S phase, but the mechanism by which this occurs has remained elusive, as metazoan histone mRNAs have a unique, conserved 3' stem-loop structure rather than the canonical 3' poly(A) tail.
Drs. Mullen & Marzluff demonstrate that uridine residues are added to the 3' end of histone mRNAs, after which the transcript is decapped and degraded at both ends by components of the general mRNA decay machinery.
This work represents the first example of the half-life of a specific mammalian mRNA transcript being regulated by oligouridylation.
Genes & Development