Telomere conversion in trypanosomes

Abstract

Activation of the gene coding for variant surface glycoprotein (VSG) 118 in Trypanosoma brucei proceeds via a duplicative transposition to a telomeric expression site. The resulting active expression-linked extra copy (ELC) is usually flanked by DNA that lacks sites for most restriction enzymes and that is thought to interfere with the cloning of the ELC as recombinant DNA in Escherichia coli. We have circumvented this problem by cloning an aberrant 118 ELC gene, flanked at the 3'-side by at least 1 kb DNA, that contains restriction enzyme sites. Our analysis shows that this DNA and the 3'-end of the 118 ELC gene are derived from another VSG gene (1.1006) that is permanently located at a telomeric position. We propose that the 3'-end of the 1.1006 gene and (all of) its 3' flanking sequence moved to the expression site by a telomere conversion. Such a telomere conversion can also account for the appearance of an extra copy of the 1.1006 gene detected in a sub-population of our trypanosome strain.