Nonsense-Mediated Decay mainly targets short poly(A)-tailed mRNAs lacking a premature termination codon | Research Square window.SnipcartSettings = { analytics: { enabled: false } }; (function() { var accessVector = localStorage.getItem('access_vector') || ''; window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; if (accessVector) { window.dataLayer.push({ user: { profile: { profileInfo: { snid: accessVector } } } }); } })(); (function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src='https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-K279D39R'); Browse Preprints In Review Journals COVID-19 Preprints AJE Video Bytes Research Tools Research Promotion AJE Professional Editing AJE Rubriq About Preprint Platform In Review Editorial Policies Our Team Advisory Board Help Center Sign In Submit a Preprint Cite Share Download PDF Article Nonsense-Mediated Decay mainly targets short poly(A)-tailed mRNAs lacking a premature termination codon Gwenael Badis-Breard, Toni Gouhier, Cosmin Saveanu This is a preprint; it has not been peer reviewed by a journal. https://doi.org/ 10.21203/rs.3.rs-6180226/v1 This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License Status: Under Review Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Abstract Nonsense-mediated mRNA decay (NMD) is a conserved eukaryotic surveillance pathway known to degrade mRNAs containing premature termination codons (PTCs). A distance long enough between the stop codon and the poly(A)-binding protein (Pab1) is required for mRNA recognition by the NMD factors Upf1, Upf2 and Upf3. Using Nanopore direct RNA sequencing, we show that PTC-containing NMD targets account for only 6% of Upf1-associated RNA and have long poly(A) tails, indicating that Upf1-binding occurs prior to RNA deadenylation. Conversely, most Upf1-associated mRNAs have short poly(A) tails, lack a PTC and correspond to highly expressed genes. A short poly(A) tail is thus an important feature of NMD targets, redefining the scope of this RNA degradation pathway. We propose a model in which loss of Pab1-binding to short poly(A)-tailed mRNAs impairs translation termination and dictates the recruitment of the NMD machinery, uncovering a hitherto unknown role of NMD in the degradation of these transcripts. Biological sciences/Molecular biology/RNA metabolism/RNA quality control Biological sciences/Molecular biology Biological sciences/Molecular biology/RNA metabolism/RNA decay Upf1 NMD mRNA decay cytoplasmic mRNA surveillance Saccharomyces cerevisiæ Full Text Additional Declarations There is NO Competing Interest. Supplementary Files SupplementaryInformation.pdf Supplementary Information SupplementaryData1.xlsx Suppementary Data 1 SupplementaryData2GSE283053Illumina.xlsx Suppementary Data 2 SupplementaryData3GSE284490Nanopore.xlsx Suppementary Data 3 Cite Share Download PDF Status: Under Review Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Research Square lets you share your work early, gain feedback from the community, and start making changes to your manuscript prior to peer review in a journal. As a division of Research Square Company, we’re committed to making research communication faster, fairer, and more useful. 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