In this issue of Cell, Prasanth et al. (2005) provide evidence that an inosine-containing RNA that is normally retained in the nucleus is cleaved within its 3' untranslated region following cellular stress. It is then transported to the cytoplasm and translated into protein. These findings suggest that the nucleus may store RNAs destined for translation that then can be released, as needed, in ...

Ribosomes that stall before completing peptide synthesis must be recycled and returned to the cytoplasmic pool. The protein Dom34 and cofactors Hbs1 and Rli1 can dissociate stalled ribosomes in vitro, but the identity of targets in the cell is unknown. Here, we extend ribosome profiling methodology to reveal a high-resolution molecular characterization of Dom34 function in vivo. Dom34 removes s...

Localization of mRNA has emerged as a fundamental mechanism for generating polarity during development. In vertebrates, one example of this phenomenon is Vg1 RNA, which is localized to the vegetal cortex of Xenopus oocytes. Vegetal localization of Vg1 RNA is directed by a 340-nt sequence element contained within its 3' untranslated region. To investigate how such cis-acting elements function in...

The authors find evidence of income convergence across all substate labor markets in the lower forty-eight U.S. states during the 1969 to 1999 period. However, convergence is not expressed in a uniform way across metropolitan/nonmetropolitan regions, across time periods, or across census regions. The authors show that catching up within the distribution is more common for nonmetropolitan region...

Though Burkina-Faso, Mali and Niger form part of a belt across Africa traditionally associated with high rates of meningitis, statistics show that this year the rates of meningitis A are the lowest ever recorded during an epidemic season. This is the result of the successful introduction of a new vaccine MenAfriVac. Nearly 20 million people were vaccinated in a massive immunization campaign in ...

Standard type systems are not sufficiently expressive when applied to low-level memory-management code. Such code often requires some form of strong update (i.e. assignments that change the type of the affected location) and needs to reason about the relative position of objects in memory. We present a novel type system which, like alias types, provides a form of strong update, but with the adv...

As the number of sequenced genomes increases, the ability to deduce genome function becomes increasingly salient. For many genome sequences, the only annotation that will be available for the foreseeable future will be based on computational predictions and comparisons with functional elements in related species. Here we discuss computational approaches for automated genome-wide annotation of f...

Recent studies have reported the identification of piwi-associated RNAs (piRNAs) in Drosophila somatic cells. Interestingly, these piRNAs derive from the 3' untranslated regions of a subset of transcribed protein-coding genes and, experimentation suggests, might control the expression of other protein-coding transcripts. Studies of additional organisms support the new pathway's presence across ...

In Drosophila, the role of telomerase is carried out by three specialized retrotransposable elements, HeT-A, TART and TAHRE. Telomeres contain long tandem head-to-tail arrays of these elements. Within each array, the three elements occur in random, but polarized, order. Some are truncated at the 5' end, giving the telomere an enriched content of the large 3' untranslated regions, which distingu...