Cytoplasmic polyadenylation

Cytoplasmic polyadenylationCytoplasmic polyadenylation

Cytoplasmic poly(A) tail elongation is a mechanism to stimulate mRNA translation that has been extensively studied in oocytes of Xenopus undergoing meiotic maturation.

Very little is known about cytoplasmic polyadenylation in other systems including Drosophila, where the process regulates the translation of important transcripts during oogenesis and early embryonic development.

Using a Drosophila cell-free system that efficiently polyadenylates Toll mRNA, we have detected the presence novel machineries for cytoplasmic polyadenylation in early embryos.

We are interested in dissecting these machineries and identifying their substrates genome-wide.