BioCentury
ARTICLE | Translation in Brief

Pin the tail

Tuning muscle fibrosis, and beyond, through the placement of mRNA polyA tails

December 22, 2016 7:06 PM UTC

Stanford University researchers have provided preclinical proof of concept that adding polyadenine (polyA) tails to atypical sites on mRNAs could treat disease. Although the team applied the strategy to the transcript of the fibrosis target, platelet derived growth factor receptor A (PDGFRA; PDGFR2; CD140A), the approach is likely to find its widest utility against disease-related mRNAs that do not encode readily druggable proteins.

During mRNA processing, immature transcripts are cleaved at a polyadenylation site, to which a string of adenines - the polyA tail - is subsequently added. PolyA tails play important roles in transcript stability, translation and nuclear export, and the tails can also be bound by microRNAs. ...