Decoupled degradation and translation enables noise-modulation by poly(A)-tails

Poly(A)-tails are crucial for mRNA translation and degradation, but the exact relationship between tail length and mRNA kinetics remains unclear. Here we employ a small library of identical mRNAs that differ only in their poly(A)-tail length to examine their behavior in human embryonic kidney cells. We find that tail length strongly correlates with mRNA degradation rates, but is decoupled from translation. Interestingly, an optimal tail length of ∼100 nucleotides displays the highest translation rate, which is identical to the average endogenous tail length measured by nanopore sequencing. Furthermore, poly(A)-tail length variability––a feature of endogenous mRNAs––impacts translation efficiency but not mRNA degradation rates. Stochastic modelling combined with single-cell tracking reveals that poly(A)-tails provide cells with an independent handle to tune gene expression fluctuations by decoupling mRNA degradation and translation. Together, this work contributes to the basic understanding of gene expression regulation and has potential applications in nucleic acid therapeutics.