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Review
. 2002 Apr 15;21(8):1881-8.
doi: 10.1093/emboj/21.8.1881.

Life without transcriptional control? From fly to man and back again

Christine E Clayton  1
Affiliations
Review

Life without transcriptional control? From fly to man and back again

Christine E Clayton. EMBO J. .

Erratum in

  • EMBO J 2002 Jul 15;21(14):3917
No abstract available

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Figures

None
Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of a generic T.brucei chromosome. The diagram is meant only to show typical features. It does not illustrate a particular chromosome and is not to scale. Information is taken from Myler et al. (1999), personal communications, other references in the text and the websites listed below. Trypanosomes and leishmanias are diploid. Although homologous chromosomes can differ considerably in size, this is mostly due to variations in the numbers of tandemly repeated genes or non-coding repeated sequences, particularly sub-temomeric repeats. Haploid genome sizes range from 30 to 40 Mb with ∼10 000 genes, and most chromosomes are 0.3–10 Mb long. Trypanosoma brucei also has many smaller ‘intermediate’ and ‘minichromosomes’ that have repetitive regions, rRNA genes and VSG genes; at the end of some of the large T.brucei chromosomes there are VSG expression sites transcribed by RNA polymerase I. Current relevant websites are http://www.cbs.dtu.dk/services/GenomeAtlas/Eukaryotes/Leishmania/major/Friedlin/Lmajor_Friedlin_1.structureatlas.lin.html; http://www.sanger.ac.uk/Projects/L_major/; http://www.tigr.org/tdb/mdb/tbdb/ index.shtml; http://www.tigr.org/tdb/; http://parsun1.path.cam.ac.uk/; http://www.sanger.ac.uk/Projects/T_brucei/; http://www.ebi.ac.uk/parasites/ paratable.html#cruzi.
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Fig. 2. The PGK locus of T.brucei, showing patterns of transcription, processing, translation and protein targeting in bloodstream forms and procyclic (tsetse fly) forms.
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Fig. 3. mRNA degradation in mammals and trypanosomes. Some of the known Saccharomyces cerevisiae participants are shown to the left; corresponding T.brucei proteins are on the right. Red pacmen are exonucleases. Where clear homologues are not yet established, the protein is illustrated in grey with a dotted border. Processes are: (A) deadenylation reducing the poly(A) tail to oligo(A); (B) decapping; (C) 5′→3′ degradation; (D) 3′→5′ degradation. For references, see the text.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Acosta-Serrano A., Almeida,I.C., Freitas-Junior,L.H., Yoshida,N. and Schenkman,S. (2001) The mucin-like glycoprotein super-family of Trypanosoma cruzi: structure and biological roles. Mol. Biochem. Parasitol., 114, 143–150. - PubMed
    1. Bates E.J., Knuepfer,E. and Smith,D.F. (2000) Poly(A)-binding protein I of Leishmania: functional analysis and localisation in trypanosomatid parasites. Nucleic Acids Res., 28, 1211–1220. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Beelman C.A. and Parker,R. (1994) Differential effects of translational inhibition in cis and trans on the decay of the unstable MFA2 mRNA. J. Biol. Chem., 269, 9687–9692. - PubMed
    1. Bellofatto V., Torres-Munoz,J.E. and Cross,G.A.M. (1991) Stable trans formation of Leptomonas seymouri by circular extrachromosomal elements. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA, 88, 6711–6715. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Berberof M., Vanhamme,L., Tebabi,P., Pays,A., Jefferies,D., Welburn,S. and Pays,E. (1995) The 3′-terminal region of the mRNAs for VSG and procyclin can confer stage specificity to gene expression in T. brucei. EMBO J., 14, 2925–2934. - PMC - PubMed

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