Introns can significantly affect gene expression in plants and many other eukaryotes in a variety of ways. Several types of gene regulation, both positive and negative, that involve plant introns are reviewed in this chapter. Some introns contain enhancer elements or alternative promoters, while many others elevate mRNA accumulation by a different process that has been named intron-mediated enhancement (IME). The introns involved in IME must be within transcribed sequences near the start of a gene and in their natural orientation to increase expression. The intron sequences involved are still poorly defined, and the mechanism of IME remains mysterious. A model of IME is presented in which introns increase transcript elongation.
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Abbreviations
- IME:
-
Intron-mediated enhancement
- NMD:
-
Nonsense-mediated-mRNA decay
- EJC:
-
Exon junction complex
- GUS:
-
β-Glucuronidase
- UTR:
-
Untranslated region
- PolII:
-
RNA polymerase II
- CTD:
-
Carboxy-terminal domain
- mRNA:
-
Messenger RNA
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Rose, A.B. (2008). Intron-Mediated Regulation of Gene Expression. In: Reddy, A.S.N., Golovkin, M. (eds) Nuclear pre-mRNA Processing in Plants. Current Topics in Microbiology and Immunology, vol 326. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-76776-3_15
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