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Quality Control and Export Redefined: New Insights into Nuclear mRNA Processing

Hosted by: Professor Leonie Quinn

Abstract

The journey of mRNA - from transcription in the nucleus to translation in the cytoplasm - is precisely regulated by sophisticated nuclear processing and surveillance mechanisms. These pathways ensure that only correctly processed transcripts are exported to the cytoplasm. My talk will focus on the interconnected processes of nuclear mRNA maturation, splicing quality control, and export. During transcription, nascent mRNAs undergo coordinated processing, splicing, and packaging, each step monitored by stringent quality-control checkpoints to prevent aberrant or toxic protein production that can cause cellular dysfunction or disease.

I will present our recent discoveries revealing a previously unknown splicing-coupled RNA surveillance mechanism, describing how cells detect and degrade improperly spliced transcripts. Additionally, we identified a novel mRNA export pathway operating parallel to canonical mechanisms, mediated by a newly discovered export receptor with a fundamentally distinct transport strategy compared to conventional shuttling factors. These findings significantly enhance our understanding of nuclear mRNA biology and highlight the precision of the cellular safeguards controlling gene expression.

Biography

Associate Professor Tamás Fischer leads the Nuclear Non-Coding RNA (ncRNA) Biology Group in the Division of Genome Sciences and Cancer at the John Curtin School of Medical Research (JCSMR), The Australian National University. He earned his PhD in 2006 from the University of Heidelberg, where he studied the coupling between transcription and mRNA export. He then undertook postdoctoral training in epigenetics and chromatin biology at the National Cancer Institute (NIH, USA), before returning to Heidelberg to establish an independent research group at the Biochemistry Centre. In 2016, he relocated his lab to Canberra to join JCSMR. His research investigates how chromatin architecture, pervasive transcription, RNA processing, and surveillance intersect to influence genome stability and contribute to diseases such as cancer and age-related disorders. In parallel, his group explores synthetic biology strategies to develop RNA-based tools for personalised cancer therapies.