 Polyadenylation

Addition of a poly(A) tail to an RNA end. Its effect and regulation depend on the compartment and transcript class.

In many eukaryotic messenger RNAs, cleavage and addition of the tail help establish a mature end and influence export, biological translation and stability. Tail length can subsequently change. Polyadenylation is therefore a processing event whose functional consequence depends on the transcript and system. ^[ref]