The poly-A tail is a long chain of adenines nucleotides that is added to a messenger RNA (mRNA) molecule during RNA processing to increase the stability of the mRNA molecule ...

Usually, the length of this "poly(A)-tail" corresponds to how long an mRNA lasts before getting degraded. An mRNA with a long tail is more stable, and will generally last longer.

Maturation of the 3′ end of most mRNAs involves endonucleolytic cleavage and synthesis of a poly(A) tail at the cleaved end. Longer tails are thought to increase mRNA stability and translation ...

Researchers have characterized how the essential mRNA poly(A) tails are synthesized in the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. The study reveals several mechanisms controlling poly(A) tail ...

Regulation of the poly(A) tail is essential for selective protein translation in early embryos. However, the mechanisms that determine and maintain the length of maternal mRNA poly(A) tails remain ...

The poly(A) tail of mRNA plays a crucial role in protecting mRNA from degradation. In a 2022 paper published in ACS Chemical Biology, Wang and her collaborators showed that chemically modifying ...

image: Poly(A) tail-mediated maternal mRNA remodeling during human oocyte-to-embryo transition view more . Credit: IGDB. Human development starts from the fertilization of a fully matured oocyte.

Writing in Molecular Therapy Nucleic Acids, researchers hypothesized that using poly(A) tail mimetics to enhance mRNA expression from haploinsufficiency-associated genes could be a disease-modifying ...