Genome-wide maps of ribosomal occupancy provide insights into adaptive evolution and regulatory roles of uORFs during Drosophila development.

ABSTRACT: Upstream open reading frames (uORFs) play important roles in regulating the main coding DNA sequences (CDSs) via translational repression. Despite their prevalence in the genomes, uORFs are overall discriminated against by natural selection. However, it remains unclear why in the genomes there are so many uORFs more conserved than expected under the assumption of neutral evolution. Here, we generated genome-wide maps of translational efficiency (TE) at the codon level throughout the life cycle of Drosophila melanogaster. We identified 35,735 uORFs that were expressed, and 32,224 (90.2%) of them showed evidence of ribosome occupancy during Drosophila development. The ribosome occupancy of uORFs is determined by genomic features, such as optimized sequence contexts around their start codons,

SUBMITTER: Zhang H 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6070289 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature