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Invariant mRNA content and mitotic protein breakdown as a solution to the Russian Doll problem of the mammalian cell cycle

Stephen Cooper¹, Kerby Shedden² & Dang Vu-Phan³

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1. University of Michigan Medical School, Department of Microbiology and Immunology
2. University of Michigan, Statistics
3. University of Michigan, Cellular and Molecular Biology

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Document Type:

Manuscript

Date:

Received 10 October 2007 14:27 UTC; Posted 11 October 2007

Subjects:

Molecular Cell Biology

Tags:

• gene expression
• cell cycle
• eukaryotic cells
• regulation

Abstract:

It is widely accepted that numerous genes are expressed in a cell-cycle dependent manner, with cycle-specific variations in mRNA content or peaks of protein content during the cell cycle. These proposed variations raise the problem of how varying cell cycle gene expression is regulated. This is the “infinite regression” problem or Russian Doll problem where postulating a cell-cycle specific control element merely pushes the explanation of cell-cycle variation back one step to the problem of how that control element itself appears and disappears at particular times during the cell cycle. We present evidence that cyclin mRNA content is invariant during the cell cycle and calculations reveal that mRNA variation does not account for observed protein variations during the cell cycle. The experimental evidence for protein breakdown only at the end of the cell cycle leads to a general model for cell-cycle control that avoids the Russian Doll problem.

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This document is licensed to the public under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License

How to cite this document:

Cooper, Stephen, Shedden, Kerby, and Vu-Phan, Dang. Invariant mRNA content and mitotic protein breakdown as a solution to the Russian Doll problem of the mammalian cell cycle. Available from Nature Precedings <http://hdl.handle.net/10101/npre.2007.1218.1> (2007)

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