Mechanism by which a LINE protein recognizes its 3' tail RNA.

ABSTRACT: LINEs mobilize their own copies via retrotransposition. LINEs can be divided into two types. One is a stringent type, which constitutes a majority of LINEs. The other is a relaxed type. To elucidate the molecular mechanism of retrotransposition, we used here two different zebrafish LINEs belonging to the stringent type. By using retrotransposition assays, we demonstrated that proteins (ORF2) encoded by an individual LINE recognize the cognate 3' tail sequence of the LINE RNA strictly. By conducting in vitro binding assays with a variety of ORF2 proteins, we demonstrated that the region between the endonuclease and reverse transcriptase domains in ORF2 is the site at which the proteins bind the stem-loop structure of the 3' tail RNA, showing that the strict recognition of the stem-loop stru

SUBMITTER: Hayashi Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4176376 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature