Non-AUG translation: a new start for protein synthesis in eukaryotes
- Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 19104 USA
- Corresponding author: wilusz{at}pennmedicine.upenn.edu
Abstract
Although it was long thought that eukaryotic translation almost always initiates at an AUG start codon, recent advancements in ribosome footprint mapping have revealed that non-AUG start codons are used at an astonishing frequency. These non-AUG initiation events are not simply errors but instead are used to generate or regulate proteins with key cellular functions; for example, during development or stress. Misregulation of non-AUG initiation events contributes to multiple human diseases, including cancer and neurodegeneration, and modulation of non-AUG usage may represent a novel therapeutic strategy. It is thus becoming increasingly clear that start codon selection is regulated by many trans-acting initiation factors as well as sequence/structural elements within messenger RNAs and that non-AUG translation has a profound impact on cellular states.
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Article is online at http://www.genesdev.org/cgi/doi/10.1101/gad.305250.117.
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