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The nuclear exosome is a complex of proteins in the nucleus that processes and degrades various RNAs. In doing so, it associates with various other proteins, including Mtr4, an RNA helicase that processes and degrades RNA. MTR4 is an essential gene conserved from yeast to humans. Mtr4 associates with various complexes, such as TRAMP and the nuclear exosome, to degrade aberrant RNAs and process RNAs such as the 5.8s rRNA and the U4 snRNA (1, 2). The ATPase region of Mtr4 has been shown to be essential, but the N‐ and C‐termini are not fully characterized (3). Current questions about MTR4 focus on how Mtr4 chooses which RNAs to process and degrade, as well as what regions of the protein affect said functions.

Through random mutagenesis of the N‐ and C‐ termini of Mtr4, we selected for conditional mutants that are phenotypically defective only at high temperature. Because Mtr4 is …