Rhythmic control of mRNA stability modulates circadian amplitude of mouse Period3 mRNA

The daily oscillations observed in most living organisms are endogenously generated with a period of 24 h, and the underlying structure of periodic oscillation is an autoregulatory transcription-translation feedback loop. The mechanisms of untranslated region (UTR)-mediated post-transcriptional regulation (e.g., mRNA degradation and internal ribosomal entry site (IRES)-mediated translation) have been suggested to fine-tune the expression of clock genes. Mouse Period3 (mPer3) is one of the paralogs of Period gene and its function is important in peripheral clocks and sleep physiology. mPer3 mRNA displays a circadian oscillation as well as a circadian phase-dependent stability, while the stability regulators still remain unknown. In this study, we identify three proteins - heterogeneous nuclear ribonucleoprotein (hnRNP) K, polypyrimidine tract-binding protein (PTB), and hnRNP D - that bind to mPer3 mRNA 30-UTR. We show that hnRNP K is a stabilizer that increases the amplitude of circadian mPer3 mRNA oscillation and hnRNP D is a destabilizer that decreases it, while PTB exhibits no effect on mPer3 mRNA expression. Our experiments describe their cytoplasmic roles for the mRNA stability regulation and the circadian amplitude formation. Moreover, our mathematical model suggests a mechanism through which post-transcriptional mRNA stability modulation provides not only the flexibility of oscillation amplitude, but also the robustness of the period and the phase for circadian mPer3 expression.