Paraspeckles are nuclear membraneless structures composed of a long non-coding RNA, Nuclear-Enriched-Abundant-Transcript-1, and RNA-binding proteins, which associate with numerous mRNAs. It is therefore believed that their cellular function is to sequester in the nucleus their associated proteins and/or target mRNAs. However, little is known about the molecular determinant in mRNA targets that allows their association to paraspeckles, except that inverted repeats of Alu sequences (IRAlu) present in the 3'UTR of mRNAs may allow this association.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCircadian clocks (∼24 h) are responsible for daily physiological, metabolic, and behavioral changes. Central to these oscillations is the regulation of gene transcription. Previous research has identified clock protein complexes that interact with the transcriptional machinery to orchestrate circadian transcription, but technological constraints have limited the identification of de novo proteins.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe circadian clock drives daily rhythms of multiple physiological processes, allowing organisms to anticipate and adjust to periodic changes in environmental conditions. These physiological rhythms are associated with robust oscillations in the expression of at least 30% of expressed genes. While the ability for the endogenous timekeeping system to generate a 24-hr cycle is a cell-autonomous mechanism based on negative autoregulatory feedback loops of transcription and translation involving core-clock genes and their protein products, it is now increasingly evident that additional mechanisms also govern the circadian oscillations of clock-controlled genes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFYou are what you eat; but when you eat also seems to be important for a healthy metabolism. In this issue of Cell Metabolism, Benegiamo et al. (2018) uncover a mechanism by which the RNA-binding protein NONO promotes the time-of-day-dependent expression of key metabolic genes at a post-transcriptional level in response to nutrition.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFParaspeckles are nuclear bodies form around the long non-coding RNA, Neat1, and RNA-binding proteins. While their role is not fully understood, they are believed to control gene expression at a post-transcriptional level by means of the nuclear retention of mRNA containing in their 3'-UTR inverted repeats of Alu sequences (IRAlu). In this study, we found that, in pituitary cells, all components of paraspeckles including four major proteins and Neat1 displayed a circadian expression pattern.
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