Profiling ascidian promoters as the primordial type of vertebrate promoter.

ABSTRACT:

Background

CpG islands are observed in mammals and other vertebrates, generally escape DNA methylation, and tend to occur in the promoters of widely expressed genes. Another class of promoter has lower G+C and CpG contents, and is thought to be involved in the spatiotemporal regulation of gene expression. Non-vertebrate deuterostomes are reported to have a single class of promoter with high-frequency CpG dinucleotides, suggesting that this is the original type of promoter. However, the limited annotation of these genes has impeded the large-scale analysis of their promoters.

Results

To determine the origins of the two classes of vertebrate promoters, we chose Ciona intestinalis, an invertebrate that is evolutionarily close to the vertebrates, and identified its transcription

SUBMITTER: Okamura K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3333190 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature