Regulation of gene expression by mechanisms that target alternatively cleaved and polyadenylated mRNA isoforms

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When gene expression is activated, the information to make a particular protein that is stored in the DNA is copied into an RNA molecule. In eukaryotes, this initial RNA molecule is made in a precursor form that is not functional and needs to be modified by three pre-mRNA processing reactions. The completion of these reactions converts this initial pre-mRNA, into a mature messenger RNA (mRNA) that can be exported from the nucleus into the cytoplasm of cells where it will be translated into a protein. One of these modifications, cleavage and polyadenylation, cleaves the pre-mRNA at specific sites, the poly(A) sites, and adds 150 adenosine nucleotides (A) to the newly created end. This forms a mature mRNA with a characteristic poly(A) tail. It has recently been discovered that most eukaryotic genes have more than one such poly(A) site and alternative usage of these sites creates mRNAs that differ in length. The process of using different poly(A) sites in a particular pre-mRNA to create mature transcripts with different end points, is named alternative cleavage and polyadenylation or APA. Most of the alternative poly(A) sites are found in a region on the mRNA, called 3'Untranslated Region (3'UTR), that does not contain information to make a protein. Instead, 3'UTRs harbour information that can regulate the availability of an mRNA for the translation machinery and so influence the amounts of proteins that can be made from it. If such regulatory information is located between different poly(A) sites in pre-mRNAs, then alternative cleavage and polyadenylation can create mRNA molecules that either present or lack such regulatory information and consequently influence the final amounts of protein that are made from a gene. In this way, APA is believed to be a critical process to regulate gene expression and is involved in the establishment of some of the most fundamental processes in eukaryotic cells including the differentiation of stem cells into tissue specific cells, the regulation of cell division and carcinogenesis. Despite its critical functions and the fact that APA affects over half of all genes, we still know very little about the processes that regulate how different poly(A) sites are chosen and the mechanisms that control the fate of the different mRNA isoforms are ill understood. The proposal presented here aims to address these fundamental gaps in our knowledge. We have recently developed a new experimental approach that enables us to investigate APA in greater detail than was previously possible. By employing this approach we identified a well-known protein called Dicer, as a regulator of poly(A) site choice. We now aim to characterise the molecular mechanisms by which Dicer selects one poly(A) site over the other. In addition, our approach enabled us to extract alternatively cleaved and polyadenylated mRNA isoforms from the nucleus and the cytoplasm. This approach revealed for the first time that many mRNAs that undergo APA and in particular those that have long 3'UTRs, are not exported into the cytoplasm but appear trapped in the nucleus. Nuclear retention of mRNA isoforms presents an intriguing way to regulate the availability of specific mRNA isoforms for protein production in the cytoplasm. This proposal aims to elucidate the mechanisms that control the retention of specific mRNA isoforms that have long 3'UTRs in the nucleus. The importance of this process is underpinned by finding that several of these retained transcripts originate from genes that are associated with cancer where the production of APA mRNA isoforms with short 3'UTRs, that lack regulatory sequences, is favoured. The outcomes of this proposal will thus not only further our understanding of a highly important process that regulates gene expression in eukaryotes but it will also help us to understand how particular regulatory processes are evaded during diseases such as cancer.