So when DNA transcription (when messenger RNA copies strands of DNA) occurs sometimes mistakes occur. One way that eukaryotic cells defend against mistakes that can occur is called Nonsense Mediated Decay (NMD). Nonsense Mediated Decay is a process that eliminates mRNA transcripts that have premature stop codons.
It is known that UPF1 is a helicase that is essential for NMD to take place. This is because UPF1 precedes the end result of Nonsense Mediated Decay in the cell signaling cascade. Scientists in a different lab have been working with UPF1 because when UPF1 doesn't bind to the proper proteins in order to continue the cell signalling cascade cancer can occur since the mistake in the mRNA has gotten through and can form a tumor. So whenever UPF1 is downregulated NMD won't occur leading to higher chances of malignant growths. Splicing Factors bring to the junctions between introns and exons and marks it to be removed my the NMD process. Positives splicing factors promote splicing and negative splicing factors inhibit splicing. Sometimes you have more negative splicing factors than positive which stops introns from being removed causing premature termination. The same process noted by the lab studying UPF1 has been found in the breast cancer cell line the lab I'm in is working with. In the other lab they did experiments where they knocked down UPF1 to see what would happen. You knock down a protein by making the mRNA that would have passed the message along to the ribosomes so it would have been coded protein double stranded. When the cell produced double stranded RNA it is degraded. So the most important thing to grasp is that when UPF1 is knocked down it will cause some proteins to be upregulated when they would normally be downregulated because UPF1 helps carry out NMD.
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Michaela BentonI'm lucky enough to go to this amazing school that has this amazing program that lets me learn amazing things. Archives
December 2017
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