bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/722702; this version posted August 2, 2019. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission. A role for DIS3L2 over human nonsense-mediated mRNA decay targets Paulo J. da Costa1,2, Juliane Menezes1,2, Margarida Saramago3, Juan F. García-Moreno1,2, Hugo A. Santos2, Margarida Gama-Carvalho2, Cecília M. Arraiano3, Sandra C. Viegas3*, and Luísa Romão1,2* 1Department of Human Genetics, Instituto Nacional de Saúde Doutor Ricardo Jorge, Lisboa, Portugal 2University of Lisboa, Faculty of Sciences, BioISI - Biosystems and Integrative Sciences Institute, Lisboa, Portugal 3Instituto de Tecnologia Química e Biológica António Xavier, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Oeiras, Portugal *Corresponding authors: Email:
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[email protected] 1 bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/722702; this version posted August 2, 2019. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission. ABSTRACT The nonsense-mediated decay (NMD) pathway selectively degrades mRNAs carrying a premature translation-termination codon but also regulates the abundance of a large number of physiological mRNAs that encode full-length proteins. In human cells, NMD-targeted mRNAs are degraded by endonucleolytic cleavage and exonucleolytic degradation from both 5’ and 3’ ends. This is done by a process not yet completely understood that recruits decapping and 5’-to-3’ exonuclease activities, as well as deadenylating and 3’-to-5’ exonuclease exosome activities.