Nucleic Acids Research Advance Access originally published online on March 4, 2008
Nucleic Acids Research 2008 36(8):2522-2529; doi:10.1093/nar/gkm1166
Nucleic Acids Research, 2008, Vol. 36, No. 8 2522-2529
© 2008 The Author(s)
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Molecular Biology |
Molecular dissection of Penelope transposable element regulatory machinery
1Engelhardt Institute of Molecular Biology RAS, Moscow, Russia, 2California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, 3Josephine Bay Paul Center for Molecular Biology and Evolution, Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, MA 02543, USA, 4Shemyakin and Ovchinnikov Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry RAS, 5Evrogen JSC, Moscow, 6Institute of Biochemistry and Physiology of Microorganisms RAS, Pushchino, Moscow Region, 7Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia and 8Institute of Cell and Molecular Biology, University of Edinburgh, Kings Buildings, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
*To whom correspondence should be addressed. Tel: +44 131 650 5377; Fax: +44 131 350 8650; Email: david.finnegan{at}ed.ac.uk
Received November 17, 2007. Revised December 15, 2007. Accepted December 18, 2007.
Penelope-like elements (PLEs) represent a new class of retroelements identified in more than 80 species belonging to at least 10 animal phyla. Penelope isolated from Drosophila virilis is the only known transpositionally active representative of this class. Although the size and structure of the Penelope major transcript has been previously described in both D. virilis and D. melanogaster transgenic strains, the architecture of the Penelope regulatory region remains unknown. In order to determine the localization of presumptive Penelope promoter and enhancer-like elements, segments of the putative Penelope regulatory region were linked to a CAT reporter gene and introduced into D. melanogaster by P-element-mediated transformation. The results obtained using ELISA to measure CAT expression levels and RNA studies, including RT–PCR, suggest that the active Penelope transposon contains an internal promoter similar to the TATA-less promoters of LINEs. The results also suggest that some of the Penelope regulatory sequences control the preferential expression in the ovaries of the adult flies by enhancing expression in the ovary and reducing expression in the carcass. The possible significance of the intron within Penelope for the function and evolution of PLEs, and the effect of Penelope insertions on adjacent genes, are discussed.
The authors wish it to be known that, in their opinion, the first two authors should be regarded as joint First Authors