Untranslated regions of mRNAs 英文参考文献.docVIP

/2002/3/3/reviews/0004.1 Review Untranslated regions of mRNAs Flavio Mignone*, Carmela Gissi*, Sabino Liuni? and Graziano Pesole* Addresses: *Dipartimento di Fisiologia e Biochimica Generali, Università di Milano, Via Celoria, 26, 20133 Milano, Italy. ?Centro di Studio sui Mitocondri e Metabolismo Energetico, Via Amendola 166/5, 70126 Bari, Italy. Correspondence: Graziano Pesole. E-mail: graziano.pesole@unimi.it Published: 28 February 2002 GenomeBiology 2002, 3(3):reviews0004.1–0004.10 The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at /2002/3/3/reviews/0004 ? BioMed Central Ltd (Print ISSN 1465-6906; Online ISSN 1465-6914) Abstract Gene expression is finely regulated at the post-transcriptional level. Features of the untranslated regions of mRNAs that control their translation, degradation and localization include stem-loop structures, upstream initiation codons and open reading frames, internal ribosome entry sites and variouscis-acting elements that are bound by RNA-binding proteins. The recent analysis of the human genome [1,2] and the data available about other higher eukaryotic genomes have revealed that only a small fraction of the genetic material - about 1.5 % - codes for protein. Indeed, most genomic DNA is involved in the regulation of gene expression, which can be exerted at either the transcriptional level, controlling whether a gene is transcribed or not and to what extent, or the post-transcriptional level, controlling the fate of the transcribed RNA molecules, including their stability, the efficiency of their translation and their subcellular localiza- tion. This article will review the structure, functions and mechanisms of mRNA untranslated regions. 5? untranslated region (5? UTR), a coding region made up of triplet codons that each encode an amino acid and a 3? untranslated region (3? UTR). Figure 1