The present experiment investigated the hypothesis that age-related declines in cognitive functioning are partly due to a decrease in peripheral sensory functioning. In particular, it was suggested that some of the decline in serial recall for verbal material might be due to even small amounts of degradation due to noise or hearing loss. Older and younger individuals identified and recalled non...

Good beginning readers typically surpass poor beginning readers in memory for linguistic material such as syllables, words, and sentences. Here we present evidence that this interaction between reading ability and memory performance does not extend to memory for nonlinguistic material like faces and nonsense designs. Using an adaptation of the continuous recognition memory paradigm of Kimura (1...

mRNAs are monitored for errors in gene expression by RNA surveillance, in which mRNAs that cannot be fully translated are degraded by the nonsense-mediated mRNA decay pathway (NMD). RNA surveillance ensures that potentially deleterious truncated proteins are seldom made. NMD pathways that promote surveillance have been found in a wide range of eukaryotes. In Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the protei...

Establishing a link between the nonsense-mediated decay pathway and a gene associated with programmed cell death could explain why this pathway is essential in most, but not all, eukaryotes.

Nonsense-mediated mRNA decay (NMD) in mammalian cells generally degrades mRNAs that terminate translation more than 50-55 nucleotides upstream of a splicing-generated exonexon junction (reviewed in Maquat, 2004a; Nagy and Maquat, 1998). Notably, dependence on exon-exon junctions distinguishes NMD in mammalian cells from NMD in all other organisms that have been examined, including Saccharomyces...

Cells frequently experience DNA damage that requires repair by homologous recombination (HR). Proteins involved in HR are carefully coordinated to ensure proper and efficient repair without interfering with normal cellular processes. In Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Rad55 functions in the early steps of HR and is regulated in response to DNA damage through phosphorylation by the Mec1 and Rad53 kina...

Meaningfulness of the relevant (MR) and irrelevant (MI) syllables and contiguity of the relevant syllables were manipulated in a task analogous to concept formation. Stimuli consisted of two nonsense syllables with one being relevant, in that it was consistently paired with a number response, and the other being irrelevant, in that it appeared equally often with each number response. MR was var...

We have previously shown that precursor mRNAs (pre-mRNAs) of serine/arginine-rich (SR) proteins are extensively alternatively spliced to generate approximately 100 distinct splice variants from 14 SR genes and that the splicing pattern of SR pre-mRNAs changes in different organs and in response to abiotic stresses. About half of the splice variants are potential targets of nonsense-mediated dec...

Nonsense-mediated mRNA decay (NMD) is an mRNA degradation pathway that regulates gene expression and mRNA quality. A complex network of macromolecular interactions regulates NMD initiation, which is only partially understood. According to prevailing models, NMD begins by the assembly of the SURF (SMG1-UPF1-eRF1-eRF3) complex at the ribosome, followed by UPF1 activation by additional factors suc...

In eukaryotes, an elaborate set of mechanisms has evolved to ensure that the multistep process of gene expression is accurately executed and adapted to cellular needs. The mRNA surveillance pathway works in this context by assessing the quality of mRNAs to ensure that they are suitable for translation. mRNA surveillance facilitates the detection and destruction of mRNAs that contain premature t...