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Advances in the roles and mechanisms of nonsense-mediated mRNA decay in embryonic development

XUAN Li-Na, SHEN Xi-Ya, WANG Peng, DU Lei-Lei, ZHANG Fan, XU Xing-Xing, HUANG Zhi-Hui^*

Institute of Neuroscience, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou 325035, China

Abstract

Nonsense-mediated mRNA decay (NMD) is originally identified as a widespread mRNA surveillance machinery in degrading ‘aberrant’ mRNA species with premature termination codons (PTCs) rapidly, which protects the cells from the accumulation of truncated proteins. Recent studies show that NMD can also regulate the degradation of normal gene transcripts, which execute important cellular and physiological functions. Therefore, NMD is considered as a highly conserved post-transcriptional regulatory mechanism in eukaryotes. NMD modulates 3% to 20% of the transcriptome from yeast to human directly or indirectly, which is essential for various physiological processes, such as cell homeostasis, stress response, proliferation, and differentiation. NMD can regulate the level of transcripts that involves in development, and single knockout of most NMD factors has an embryonic lethal effect. NMD plays an important role in the self-renewal, differentiation of embryonic stem cells and is critical during embryonic development. In this review, we summarized the latest advances in the roles and mechanisms of NMD in embryonic development, in order to provide new ideas for the research on embryonic development and the treatment of embryonic development related diseases.

Key words: nonsense-mediated mRNA decay; premature termination codons; embryonic stem cells; Self-renewal; differentiation; embryonic development

Received: 2018-05-30　　Accepted: 2018-10-24

Corresponding author: 黄智慧　　E-mail: hzhzju021@163.com

DOI: 10.13294/j.aps.2019.0019

Citing This Article：

XUAN Li-Na, SHEN Xi-Ya, WANG Peng, DU Lei-Lei, ZHANG Fan, XU Xing-Xing, HUANG Zhi-Hui. Advances in the roles and mechanisms of nonsense-mediated mRNA decay in embryonic development. Acta Physiol Sin 2019; 71 (2): 327-335 (in Chinese with English abstract).