Abstract:

The genetic compensation response (GCR) was firstly described in zebrafish to explain the phenotypic discrepancies between gene-knockout and gene-knockdown, whereby a deleterious mutation, but not gene-knockdown, can lead to the transcriptional upregulation of related genes, which can assume the function of the mutated gene. This phenomenon was also found in other model systems including mice and Arabidopsis. However, the underlying molecular mechanism of the GCR remains elusive until two papers were published in Nature on April 3, 2019: one from our lab and the other from Stainier’s lab. Using different genetic mutants of various genes in zebrafish or culture cells of mice, both of us reveal that the upregulation of compensatory genes is only triggered by mutations that generate a premature termination codon (PTC); the compensatory genes share nucleotide sequence homology to the mutated genes; nonsense mRNA mediated decay pathway (NMD) is essential for the induction of GCR, and the increased transcription of the compensatory genes is accompanied by an enhancement of H3K4 trimethylation (H3K4me3) at their transcription start site (TSS) regions. In this review, we summarize the mechanisms of the GCR proposed in the two studies.

Key words: genetic compensation response (GCR), nonsense mRNA mediated decay pathway (NMD), histone modification