Poly(A)-tail profiling reveals an embryonic switch in translational control

By Alexander O. Subtelny, Stephen W. Eichhorn, Grace R Chen, H. Sive, David P. Bartel. Nature, 2014

628 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Poly(A) tails enhance the stability and translation of most eukaryotic messenger RNAs, but difficulties in globally measuring poly(A)-tail lengths have impeded greater understanding of poly(A)-tail function. Here we describe poly(A)-tail length profiling by sequencing (PAL-seq) and apply it to measure tail lengths of millions of individual RNAs isolated from yeasts, cell lines, Arabidopsis thaliana leaves, mouse liver, and zebrafish and frog embryos. Poly(A)-tail lengths were conserved between orthologous mRNAs, with mRNAs encoding ribosomal proteins and other ‘housekeeping’ proteins tending to have shorter tails. As expected, tail lengths were coupled to translational efficiencies in early zebrafish and frog embryos. However, this strong coupling diminished at gastrulation and was absent in non-embryonic samples, indicating a rapid developmental switch in the nature of translational control. This switch complements an earlier switch to zygotic transcriptional control and explains why the predominant effect of microRNA-mediated deadenylation concurrently shifts from translational repression to mRNA destabilization.

Subfields: Molecular Biology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8b30965fa7502020e80761b17950ae3cedea9e53

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Molecular Biology

Citations in the corpus

The Functions of MicroRNAs: mRNA Decay and Translational Repression. (2015, methodology): “The tail lengths correlated well with translational efficiency in the zebrafish early embryonic stage (2–4 hpf), but surprisingly no coupling was observed in the later stage (6 hpf) nor in other mammalian cells [62].”
Metazoan MicroRNAs (2018, background): “In early embryos, shortening the tail of an mRNA does not change its stability but dramatically decreases its translational efficiency, whereas at gastrulation and in post-embryonic cells, shortening the tail of an mRNA reduces its stability but does not change its translational efficiency (Subtelny”
Codon identity regulates mRNA stability and translation efficiency during the maternal‐to‐zygotic transition (2016, neutral): “The length of the poly(A) tail influences translation and stability of mRNAs (Eckmann et al, 2011; Weill et al, 2012; Subtelny et al, 2014).”
Germline Stem Cells (2017, neutral): “GSCs are pluripotent, giving rise to both sperm and oocytes, which, after fertilization, produce a totipotent embryo.”
P-Body Purification Reveals the Condensation of Repressed mRNA Regulons. (2017, methodology): “As measured in HEK293 cells (Subtelny et al., 2014), the mean poly(A) tail length correlated poorly with mRNA accumulation in P-bodies (Figures 5D and 5D0).”