Drs. Nikolay Kolev and Joan Steitz (Yale University) lend new insight into the histone pre-mRNA processing machinery, and reveal the surprising involvement of common factors between 3'-end processing of poly(A)-lacking (ie. histone) and poly(A)-containing mRNAs. This paper identifies the long sought-after factor for histone pre-mRNA processing what has simply been known as the "heat labile factor" (HLF) nearly 20 years after its initial characterization. Drs. Kolev and Steitz describe HLF as a large multi-protein complex consisting of the heat-sensitive protein, symplekin, bound to a number of other polyadenylation factors. Interesting, symplekin has been previously implicated in nuclear polyadenylation and the elongation of poly(A) tails in the cytoplasm. The authors point out that this new role for symplekin in histone pre-mRNA processing "points to a common evolutionary origin for the molecular machinery that makes the 3' ends of all messenger RNAs, whether the process occurs in the nucleus or cytoplasm and whether or not poly(A) tails are involved."

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Contact: Heather Cosel
coselpie@cshl.edu
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
16-Oct-2005

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