We have previously reported that human ACAT1 mRNAs produce the 50 kDa protein using the AUG1397-1399 initiation codon,and also a minor 56 kDa isoform using the upstream in-frame GGC1274-1276initiation codon.The GGC1274-1276 codon is located at the optional long 5’-untranslated region(5’-UTR,nt 1-1396)of the mRNAs.The DNA sequences corresponding to this 5’-UTR are located in two different chromosomes,7 and 1.In the current work,we report that the optional long 5’-UTR significantly impairs the production of human ACAT1 protein initiated from the AUG1397-1399 codon,mainly by promoting its mRNA decay.The west blot analyses indicated that the optional long 5’-UTR potently impaired the production of different proteins initiated from the AUG1397-1399codon,meaning that this impairing effect was not influenced by the 3’-UTR or the coding sequence of ACAT1 mRNA.The results of reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction demonstrated that this 5’-UTR dramatically reduced the contents of its linked mRNAs.Analyses of the protein to mRNA ratios showed that this 5’-UTR mainly decreased its mRNA stability rather than altering its translational efficiency.We next performed the plasmid transfection experiments and used actinomycin D to inhibit transcription.The results showed that this 5’-UTR promoted its mRNA decay.Additional transfection and nucleofection experiments using RNAs prepared in vitro illustrated that,in both the cytoplasm and the nucleus of cells,the optional long 5’-UTR-linked mRNAs decayed faster than those without the link.Overall,our study brings new insight to the regulation of the human ACAT1 gene expression at the post-transcription level.