Bioinformatic characterization of regulatory elements in trypanosomatid genomes

DE GAUDENZI, JG; CARMONA, S; AGÜERO, F; FRASCH, AC

Puerto Madryn

Congreso; 46th Annual Meeting Argentine Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Research; 2010

The Kinetoplastid parasites Trypanosoma cruzi, Trypanosoma brucei and Leishmania major are unique microorganisms which mainly use post-transcriptional mechanisms to regulate gene expression, including control of mRNA turnover and translational efficiency. In many cases these processes depend on the presence of certain elements located at the 3’ untranslated regions (3’UTRs) of mRNAs that are recognized by RNA-binding proteins (RBPs). We have previously showed that trypanosomal transcripts encoding genes with functions in different cellular processes contain conserved structural elements in their UTRs that are involved in RNA-binding. Using information from the KEGG metabolic pathways database (http://www.genome.jp/kegg/pathway.html) we grouped mRNAs based on their mapping to broad metabolic categories. We next tested whether the UTRs in each set of mRNAs contained a common sequence element using motif discovery tools, and obtained common secondary RNA elements enriched in the 3’UTR of groups of functionally linked transcripts. The model that emerges from our results is in line with the results of an increasing number of studies that suggest coordination of gene expression by binding of RBPs to different categories of related mRNAs, thus defining a post-transcriptional operon.