Revenge of the NRD: Preferential Degradation of Nonfunctional Eukaryotic rRNA

Eukaryotic cells have several quality control systems that monitor the proper processing of RNAs during RNA biogenesis or the function of cytoplasmic mRNAs. A recent study in Molecular Cell by LaRiviere et al. (2006) shows that after production, mature rRNA is also subject to quality control and nonfunctional ribosomes are targeted for destruction by a novel ribosome surveillance mechanism.