Abstract
Mobility of eukaryotic transposable elements (TEs) are finely regulated to avoid an excessive mutational load caused by their movement. The transposition of retrotransposons is usually regulated through the interaction of host- and TE-encoded proteins, with non-coding regions (LTR and 5′-UTR) of the transposon. Examples of new potent cis-acting sequences, identified and characterized in the non-coding regions of retrotransposons, include the insulator of gypsy and Idefix, and the enhancer of ZAM of Drosophila melanogaster. Recently we have shown that in the 5′-UTR of the LTR-retrotransposon ZAM there is a sequence structured in tandem-repeat capable of operating as an insulator both in Drosophila (S2R+) and human cells (HEK293). Here, we test the hypothesis that tandem repeated 5′-UTR of a different LTR-retrotransposon could accommodate similar regulatory elements. The comparison of the 5′-UTR of some LTR-transposons allowed us to identify a shared motif of 13 bp, called Transposable Element Redundant Motif (TERM). Surprisingly, we demonstrated, by Yeast One-Hybrid assay, that TERM interacts with the D. melanogaster ribosomal protein RpL22. The Drosophila RpL22 has additional Ala-, Lys- and Pro-rich sequences at the amino terminus, which resembles the carboxy-terminal portion of histone H1 and histone H5. For this reason, it has been hypothesized that RpL22 might have two functions, namely the role in organizing the ribosome, and a potential regulatory role involving DNA-binding similar to histone H1, which represses transcription in Drosophila. In this paper, we show, by two independent sets of experiments, that DmRpL22 is able to directly and specifically bind DNA of Drosophila melanogaster.
Highlights
Transposable elements (TE) are DNA sequences which are able to move throughout the host genome
The results showed that 35 independent clones (69% of the positive clones) correspond to the gene CG7434 that encodes the Ribosomal protein L22 (RpL22)
Fifty-nine percent (35 out of 51) of the positive clones isolated in the One-Hybrid assay correspond to gene CG7434 encoding the ribosomal protein RpL22
Summary
Transposable elements (TE) are DNA sequences which are able to move throughout the host genome. TEs constitute a large fraction of the eukaryotic genome (i.e., up to 45% of the human genome and at least 50% of the maize genome [2,3]). The activity of these elements has been linked to more than 75 human diseases including hemophilia A, breast cancer, colorectal cancer, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and frontotemporal lobar degeneration [4,5,6,7,8]. D. melanogaster has always been considered a model organism for the study of eukaryotic TEs
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