Abstract
Gene expression is regulated at both the mRNA and protein level through on‐off switches and fine‐tuned control. In their recent study, Edfors et al (2016) use highly accurate, targeted proteomics methods and examine to what extent the amount of protein produced per mRNA transcript varies across different tissues. They find that the bulk part of protein concentrations is set at a per‐gene level: This relationship, the protein/mRNA ratio, is constant across cell types and tissues, but varies by several orders of magnitude across genes. Mol Syst Biol. (2016) 12: 885
Highlights
Gene expression is regulated at both the mRNA and protein level through on–off switches and fine-tuned control
In mammalian cells the correlation has been shown to be much lower and variable depending on the cell type and state
In mammalian cells subjected to protein misfolding stress, the correlation between protein and mRNA concentrations breaks down and extensive regulation occurs at both the mRNA and protein level (Cheng et al, 2016)
Summary
Gene expression is regulated at both the mRNA and protein level through on–off switches and fine-tuned control. The lack of correlation between mRNA and protein concentrations has often been attributed, at least partly, to the high measurement noise of proteomics methods. Edfors et al (2016) used one of these methods, PRM (parallel reaction monitoring), to measure the concentrations of 55 proteins in 20 different human cell lines and tissues at high resolution and low error rate (Edfors et al, 2016).
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