Transcriptional slippage in bacteria: distribution in sequenced genomes and utilization in IS element gene expression

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Publication Type Journal Article
School or College School of Medicine
Department Human Genetics
Creator Gesteland, Raymond F.; Baranov, Pavel V.; Atkins, John F.; Hammer, Andrew W.
Other Author Zhou, Jiadong
Title Transcriptional slippage in bacteria: distribution in sequenced genomes and utilization in IS element gene expression
Date 2005
Description ABSTRACT: Background: Transcription slippage occurs on certain patterns of repeat mononucleotides, resulting in synthesis of a heterogeneous population of mRNAs. Individual mRNA molecules within this population differ in the number of nucleotides they contain that are not specified by the template. When transcriptional slippage occurs in a coding sequence, translation of the resulting mRNAs yields more than one protein product. Except where the products of the resulting mRNAs have distinct functions, transcription slippage occurring in a coding region is expected to be disadvantageous. This probably leads to selection against most slippage-prone sequences in coding regions. Results: To find a length at which such selection is evident, we analyzed the distribution of repetitive runs of A and T of different lengths in 108 bacterial genomes. This length varies significantly among different bacteria, but in a large proportion of available genomes corresponds to nine nucleotides. Comparative sequence analysis of these genomes was used to identify occurrences of 9A and 9T transcriptional slippage-prone sequences used for gene expression. Conclusions: IS element genes are the largest group found to exploit this phenomenon. A number of genes with disrupted open reading frames (ORFs) have slippage-prone sequences at which transcriptional slippage would result in uninterrupted ORF restoration at the mRNA level. The ability of such genes to encode functional full-length protein products brings into question their annotation as pseudogenes and in these cases is pertinent to the significance of the term 'authentic frameshift' frequently assigned to such genes.
Type Text
Publisher BioMed Central
Volume 6
Issue 3
Subject Transcription slippage; Bacterial genomes; IS element genes
Subject MESH Nucleotides; Bacterial Proteins; Genome, Bacterial
Language eng
Bibliographic Citation Baranov PV, Hammer AW, Zhou J, Gesteland RF, Atkins JF. 2005. Transcriptional slippage in bacteria: distribution in sequenced genomes and utilization in IS element gene expression. Genome Biol 6(3):R25
Rights Management (c) [Author(s)]. Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
Format Medium application/pdf
Format Extent 236,406 Bytes
Identifier ir-main,3779
ARK ark:/87278/s6mw3186
Setname ir_uspace
ID 702783
Reference URL https://collections.lib.utah.edu/ark:/87278/s6mw3186
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