The steady state abundance of an mRNA is determined by the balance between transcription and decay. While regulation of transcription has been well studied both experimentally and computationally, regulation of transcript stability has received little attention. We developed a novel algorithm, MatrixREDUCE, that discovers the position-specific affinity matrices for unknown RNA-binding factors and infers their condition-specific activities, using only genomic sequence data and steady-state mRNA expression data as input. We identified and computationally characterized the binding sites for six mRNA stability regulators in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which include two members of the Pumilio-homology domain (Puf) family of RNA-binding proteins, Puf3p and Puf4p. We provide computational and experimental evidence that regulation of mRNA stability by these factors is modulated in response to a variety of environmental stimuli.
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