Circadian Rhythms Require Proper RNA Splicing

摘要

Circadian rhythms have evolved in a wide variety of organisms, allowing them to anticipate the 24-h diurnal cycle of daylight and darkness and adjust endogenous biological processes to this predictable cycle. This rhythm, which is regularly entrained by the actual onset of daylight, involves a set of circadian clock–regulated genes that operate in a feedback-controlled loop to ensure proper expression of target genes (Nakamichi, 2011). Although most research has focused on transcriptional regulation of clock-associated genes, there is considerable involvement of posttranscriptional processes, such as mRNA stability, translatability, and posttranslational regulation (Cibois et al., 2010; Kojima et al., 2011).