Highly Accessed Review

Untranslated regions of mRNAs

Flavio Mignone1, Carmela Gissi1, Sabino Liuni2 and Graziano Pesole1*

Author Affiliations

1 Dipartimento di Fisiologia e Biochimica Generali, Università di Milano, Via Celoria, 26, 20133 Milano, Italy

2 Centro di Studio sui Mitocondri e Metabolismo Energetico, Via Amendola 166/5, 70126 Bari, Italy

For all author emails, please log on.

Genome Biology 2002, 3:reviews0004-reviews0004.10 doi:10.1186/gb-2002-3-3-reviews0004

Published: 28 February 2002

Abstract

Gene expression is finely regulated at the post-transcriptional level. Features of the untranslated regions of mRNAs that control their translation, degradation and localization include stem-loop structures, upstream initiation codons and open reading frames, internal ribosome entry sites and various cis-acting elements that are bound by RNA-binding proteins.