Aberrant mRNA transcripts and nonsense-mediated decay

Nobody's perfect, and even the cell turns out a certain fraction of erroneous mRNA transcripts. One of the key quality control mechanisms put in place to recognize and eliminate these transcripts before they can be translated into faulty proteins is nonsense-mediated decay. Proteins involved in nonsense-mediated decay are highly conserved across species from plants to humans, and recent studies in Arabidopsis thaliana reveal both intriguing similarities and differences in the mechanisms employed to carry it out.