Typical mRNA half life in human cells

Range ~10 Hours
Organism Human Homo sapiens
Reference Yang et al. Decay Rates of Human mRNAs: Correlation With Functional Characteristics and Sequence Attributes, Genome Res. 13: 1863-1872, 2003 DOI: 10.1101/gr.1272403 p.1864 left column bottom paragraphPubMed ID12902380
Method Abstract: "[Investigators] decided to measure mRNA decay rates in two human cell lines (Hep G2-Hepatocellular carcinoma and Bud8) with high-density oligonucleotide arrays that enable the measurement of decay rates simultaneously for thousands of mRNA species. Using existing annotation and the Gene Ontology hierarchy of biological processes, [they] assign mRNAs to functional classes at various levels of resolution and compare the decay rate statistics between these classes." P.1864 left column bottom paragraph: "To study the rates of mRNA degradation ("decay") in human cells, [they] measured changes in mRNA levels following application of the RNA polymerase inhibitor Actinomycin D with Affymetrix U95Av2 high-density oligonucleotide arrays. [They] collected RNA from cells after 2–3 h of inhibition and used the Affymetrix Microarray Suite (MAS) 5.0 to analyze the changes from the untreated state. Four experiments (i.e., eight hybridizations) were performed in HepG2 cells, and [they] conducted an additional experiment in Bud8 primary cells to exclude the possibility of cancer-cell-specific artifacts."
Comments P.1864 left column bottom paragraph: "Combining the decay rate for all probe sets present in the initial and final conditions, [investigators] find that the median half-life in both cell types was ∼10 h (Supplemental Table 9, E. van Nimwegen and E. Yang, unpubl.)...As indicated in the cumulative distribution plot, a small percentage (∼5%) of expressed transcripts have "fast" decay rates (which we define as r > 0.5 h^-1 or a half-life < 2 h)." See BNID 100205
Entered by Uri M
ID 104747