Eukaryotic mRNPs may represent posttranscriptional operons.

Genomic array analysis of endogenous mammalian ribonucleoproteins has recently revealed three novel findings: (1) mRNA binding proteins are associated with unique subpopulations of messages, (2) the compositions of these mRNA subsets can vary with growth conditions, and (3) the same mRNA species can be found in multiple mRNP complexes. Based on these and other findings, we propose a model of posttranscriptional gene expression in which mRNA binding proteins regulate mRNAs as subpopulations during cell growth and development. This model predicts that functionally related genes are regulated posttranscriptionally as groups by specific mRNA binding proteins that recognize sequence elements in common among the mRNAs.