One important task of eukaryotic cells is to translate only mRNAs that were correctly processed to prevent the production of truncated proteins, found in neurodegenerative diseases and cancer. Nuclear quality control of splicing requires the SR-like proteins Gbp2 and Hrb1 in S. cerevisiae, where they promote the degradation of faulty pre-mRNAs. Here we show that Gbp2 and Hrb1 also function in nonsense mediated decay (NMD) of spliced premature termination codon (PTC)-containing mRNAs. Our data support a model in which they are in a complex with the Upf-proteins and help to transmit the Upf1-mediated PTC recognition to the transcripts ends. Most importantly they appear to promote translation repression of spliced transcripts that contain a PTC and to finally facilitate degradation of the RNA, presumably by supporting the recruitment of the degradation factors. Therefore, they seem to control mRNA quality beyond the nuclear border and may thus be global surveillance factors. Identification of SR-proteins as general cellular surveillance factors in yeast will help to understand the complex human system in which many diseases with defects in SR-proteins or NMD are known, but the proteins were not yet recognized as general RNA surveillance factors.
Keywords: SR-like proteins; Upf1; decay; mRNA; surveillance; translation.