Mathematical Modeling of mRNA Poly(A) Tail Shortening Process

A sequence of deadenylation events, or the shortening of the poly(A) tail, is a highly regulated process during the life cycle of mRNAs. Advances in biochemistry have enabled the study of deadenylation events at single-nucleotide resolution. Here we describe mathematical models and their applications to estimate the kinetics of a single deadenylation event in vitro. We demonstrate how this quantitative approach is used for assessing reactions with synthetic RNA with poly(A) tails and the CCR4-NOT complex. This method is also applicable to investigating the catalytic activities of other exonucleases and RNA substrates. All example data and custom software are available on GitHub: https://github.com/2yngsklab/deadenylation-kinetics .