Non stop decay

Non-stop decay is a cellular mechanism of mRNA surveillance to detect mRNA molecules lacking a stop codon and prevent these mRNAs from translation. The non-stop decay pathway releases ribosomes that have reached the far 3' end of an mRNA and guides the mRNA to the exosome complex for selective degradation by RNase R in bacteria. In contrast to NMD, polypeptides do not release from the ribosome, and thus, NSD seems to involve mRNA decay factors distinct from NMD.