A new role of introns?

upstream open reading frame, translational control

We are investigating a new mechanism that regulates gene expression through upstream open reading frames and introns in the 5’UTRs (Lim et al., 2018). We estimate that ~30% of mRNAs are regulated by this new mechanism. We are developing computational and experimental methods (e.g., quantitative proteomics) to study this new mechanism.

Ribosome profiling captures the positions of translating ribosomes along mRNAs (left). We found distinct triplet periodicity of ribosome profiles on mRNAs with upstream open reading frames and 5'UTR introns (right).

References

2018

  1. The exon–intron gene structure upstream of the initiation codon predicts translation efficiency
    Chun Shen Lim, Samuel J T Wardell , Torsten Kleffmann , and 1 more author
    Nucleic Acids Research, 2018
    35 Google Scholar citations