Biochemistry Questions Biochemistry Questions / Explain the three mechanisms by which mRNAs are localized to specific subcellular regions.

mRNA can be localised by three mechanism:

  1. Selective degradation
  2. Diffusion and anchoring
  3. Motor proteins

Selective degradation is a form of negative regulation, inhibiting translation in areas of the cell where the protein is not desired.

mRNA can become trapped in proteins that have already been localised, allowing diffusion to be exploited to localise mRNA to desired regions of the cell.

Motor proteins can be used to drag mRNA transcripts to specific areas of the cell. This is exploited by ASH1 transcript localisation in S. cerevisiae, allowing transcripts to be moved to the daughter cell.