Equal Immune Rights For All Polypeptides (106.38)

Abstract

Abstract Effective immune surveillance requires that MHC class I molecules display a peptide repertoire on the surface representing all cellular proteins. How the peptide repertoire can be comprehensive despite large differences in abundance and stability of individual proteins is not known. We show here that peptide presentation by MHC I molecules is strongly influenced by the pioneer round of translation (PRT) associated with nonsense mediated decay (NMD) of mRNAs. The PRT allows cells to detect and eliminate aberrant mRNAs containing premature stop codons. Inhibition of PRT by knock-down of CBP80, a unique cap-binding protein reduced peptide presentation by MHC class I molecules on the cell surface without affecting global protein synthesis. On the other hand, introduction of premature stop codons changed mRNA stability without affecting peptide presentation by MHC I on the cell surface. Thus, the pioneer round of translation could be used to derive peptides presentation by MHC I molecules to generate a comprehensive display of virtually all endogenous proteins.