Nonsense Mediated mRNA Decay (NMD) Mechanism in Drosophila: A Short Review

Nonsense-mediated mRNA decay (NMD) is a mechanism that prevents the accumulation of malfunctioning protein and also regulates the clinical manifestation of many genetic disorders. This pathway not only degrade mRNA containing frame shift and nonsense mutation but also regulate the expression of naturally occurring transcript having features recognized by the NMD machinery. NMD contributes to the post transcriptional regulation of about 10 % of the transcriptome in Drosophila, yeast and human cell. In Drosophila, the degradation of non-sense transcript is initiated by endonucleolytic cleavage near the PTC and RNA fragments are degraded from the newly generated ends. The 5fragmentis degraded by exosome and 3 fragment is degraded by Xrn1. In drosophila, many proteins involved in the mechanism of NMD mainly are SMG1, SMG5, SMG6, UPF1, UPF2, UPF3. For the activation of NMD, recognition of pre-mature termination codon PTC is necessary. In this review we have discussed the current knowledge of NMD mechanism in Drosophila that will help us in future studies.