AsianScientist (Sep. 14, 2016) – Messenger molecules in the flatworm Schmidtea mediterranea have alternate forms that vary in the lengths and positions of their tails, a team of scientists in India has found. Their work was published in G3:Genes|Genome|Genetics.
The messenger molecules that convey instructions from DNA to protein factories for protein synthesis behave somewhat like kites, in that they require a tail to stabilize them so that they can function. These tails are added to messenger molecules mRNA in a process called polyadenylation—the length or position of the tail affects the function of the messenger molecules, and hence influences gene expression.
In the study, led by Dr. Vairavan Lakshmanan of SASTRA University and colleagues from the Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine and the National Center for Biological Sciences, the researchers discovered that around 40 percent of the transcripts in planaria were alternatively polyadenylated, resulting either in an altered tail or a change in coding sequence. They also found a tissue-specific expression pattern for alternate polyadenylated transcripts.
“One of the most interesting patterns that have emerged from this study is that the same mRNAs with different tails are found in different tissues. Actively regenerating tissues expressing a gene have mRNAs with shorter tails, while mature cells expressing that same gene have mRNAs with longer tails,” said Laskhmanan.
This study on S. mediterranea is the first of its kind in a flatworm model, which, due to their incredible regeneration abilities, also provide insights into the role of alternative polyadenylation in stem cell regulation, cancer and tissue regeneration.
The article can be found at: Lakshmanan et al. (2016) Genome-Wide Analysis of Polyadenylation Events in Schmidtea Mediterranea.
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Source: National Center for Biological Sciences; Photo: Pixabay.
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