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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2022 Nov 15.
Published in final edited form as: Nat Cell Biol. 2022 May 9;24(5):748–756. doi: 10.1038/s41556-022-00897-w

Extended Data Fig. 6. 3’ UTR of Cenpa message has hallmarks of dormant maternal mRNA.

Extended Data Fig. 6

a, Polyadenylation (addition of a poly (A) tail) of mRNA is a mechanism to control gene expression. Nuclear polyadenylation is an essential part of post-transcriptional processing of most mRNAs, dictated by the ubiquitous cis-element 3’ UTR hexameric motif AATAAA (nuclear polyadenylation element, NPE). Dormant maternal mRNAs are deposited in the oocyte with short poly(A) tails and are translationally inactive. After fertilization, these maternal mRNAs undergo translation by elongation of the poly(A) tail, controlled by a cytoplasmic polyadenylation element (CPE) usually present within 100 nt upstream of the NPE28. We find conserved CPEs in the mouse, human and frog Cenpa 3’ UTRs (CPE I = TTTTAT or CPE II = TTTTAA) upstream of the NPE as expected for dormant maternal mRNAs. b, Analysis of 12 sequenced rodent species38 reveals that CPEs (CPE I in bold boxes and CPE II in dashed boxes) are present upstream of the NPE in every species as expected for a maternal effect gene.