Question

Briefly describe mRNA degredation

Answer 1

mRNA is protected from degradation by a 5’ cap structure and a 3’ poly adenine tail. In the deadenylation dependent mRNA decay pathway, the polyA tail is gradually shortened by exonucleases.

Finally attracts the degradation machinery eventually degrades the mRNA in both in the 5’ to 3’ direction and in the 3’ to 5’ direction. Including the nonsense mediated decay pathway, surpasses the need for deadenylation and can remove the mRNA from the transcriptional pool independently. Astonishingly, the same enzymes are responsible for the actual degradation of the mRNA independent of the pathway.

Thus in breif there are basically three types of mRNA degradation

1. Deadenylation mediated decay
2. Nonsense mediated mRNA decay
3. ARE mediated mRNA Decay