PubMed Health⌕ Search

SEARCH · PubMed Health

Results for “Translational repression”

Explore indexed PubMed citations for clinical trials, systematic reviews and public health research. Read source abstracts and follow each citation to its original PubMed record.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 865 records · Page 48Linked to original sources

let-7 microRNA functions as a potential growth suppressor in human colon cancer cells.

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are endogenously expressed RNAs, 18-25 nucleotides in length, that repress protein translation through binding to target mRNAs. miRNAs have been implicated in many cellular processes including cell proliferation, differentiation, and death. Recently, let-7 miRNAs were found to regulate human RAS oncogene expression and to be often down-regulated in human lung tumors. In this study, we examined the expression of let-7 miRNAs in human colon cancer tumors and cell lines, with the result that 2 of 6 cases and 1 of 3 cell lines showed reduced expression of let-7. When let-7 low-expressing DLD-1 human colon cancer cells were transfected with let-7a-1 precursor miRNA, which is located at chromosome 9q22.3, the cells underwent significant growth suppression. At that time, the levels of RAS and c-myc proteins were lowered after the transfection, whereas the levels of both of their mRNAs remained almost unchanged. These findings suggest the involvement of let-7 miRNA in the growth of colon cancer cells. Thus, miRNAs might provide a basis for novel RNA anti-cancer agents.

Adult↗

Molecular characterization of two anther-specific genes encoding putative RNA-binding proteins, AtRBP45s, in Arabidopsis thaliana.

RRM (RNA-recognition motif) domain is important for the post-transcriptional regulation of gene expression including RNA processing. In our previous study, we found one anther- and/or pollen-specific gene (LjRRM1, previously named as LjMfb-U93) in model legume, Lotus japonicus. Because of the richness of genomic information of another model plant, Arabidopsis thaliana, for functional analysis, we identified and characterized the orthologous genes in A. thaliana. By comparison of the partial nucleotide sequence of LjRRM1 to the public database, we identified three homologous genes (AtRBP45a, AtRBP45b, and AtRBP45c) in A. thaliana genome. Based on promoter analysis, both AtRBP45a and AtRBP45c were specifically expressed in immature anther tissues (tapetum cells) and mature pollen grains of transgenic plants. This expression pattern of AtRBP45a and AtRBP45c is quite similar to that of LjRRM1, indicating that AtRBP45a and AtRBP45c would be orthologous to LjRRM1. Because in another previous experiment, it was shown that proteins having RRM domains were related to pre-mRNA maturation, and as a conclusion, it is possible that LjRRM1, AtRBP45a, and AtRBP45c genes encoding RNA-binding proteins are functionally involved in the repression of translation in mature pollen grains in L. japonicus and A. thaliana.

Amino Acid Sequence↗

IS200: an old and still bacterial transposon.

IS200 is a mobile element found in a variety of eubacterial genera, such as Salmonella, Escherichia, Shigella, Vibrio, Enterococcus, Clostridium, Helicobacter, and Actinobacillus. In addition, IS200-like elements are found in archaea. IS200 elements are very small (707-711 bp) and contain a single gene. Cladograms constructed with IS200 DNA sequences suggest that IS200 has not spread among eubacteria by horizontal transfer; thus it may be an ancestral component of the bacterial genome. Self-restraint may have favored this evolutionary endurance; in fact, unlike typical mobile elements, IS200 transposes rarely. Tight repression of transposase synthesis is achieved by a combination of mechanisms: inefficient transcription, protection from impinging transcription by a transcriptional terminator, and repression of translation by a stem-loop mRNA structure. A consequence of IS200 self-restraint is that the number and distribution of IS200 elements remain fairly constant in natural populations of bacteria. This stability makes IS200 a suitable molecular marker for epidemiological and ecological studies, especially when the number of IS200 copies is high. In Salmonella enterica, IS200 fingerprinting is extensively used for strain discrimination.

Archaea↗

[Basic research on and application of RNA interference].

RNAi, a novel strategy of gene-silencing induced by dsRNA, has recently become an important topic of discussion. dsRNAs introduced into a living body are processed by an enzyme known as the Dicer and become fractions of 21-23 nt RNAs (siRNA), after which they form protein complexes known as RNA-induced silencing complexes (RISC). The resulting RISC recognizes cognate mRNAs and cleave them. There are 2 ways to introduce dsRNAs to a living body: direct introduction of synthetic dsRNAs, and introduction of DNA templates into cells, followed by production of dsRNAs by transcription. Now that we can apply RNAi technologies into a living body, RNAi has become a widely used tool due to its great simplicity and high efficiency. However, there are still problems to be solved for more efficient use of RNAi. There are a wide range of applications such as analysis of gene functions and gene therapy. It is suggested that small RNAs, called miRNAs, exist in a living body and bind mRNAs to repress their translations. miRNA plays a great role in gene regulation and control of the differentiation and development of cells.

Animals↗

The inhibition of the iron responsive element RNA-protein interaction by heme does not mimic in vivo iron regulation.

Hemin at greater than 1 microM concentrations inhibits the interaction of the iron responsive element (IRE) and the iron responsive element binding protein (IRE-BP) as measured by gel retardation and UV cross-linking. Heme has recently been proposed to inhibit the repression of translation of an IRE-containing mRNA (Lin, J. J., Daniels-McQueen, S., Patino, M. M., Gaffield, L., Walden, W. E., and Thach, R. E., (1990) Science 247, 74-76). Our binding inhibition provides structural support for these observations. The action of hemin, however, does not mimic the physiologically demonstrated inhibition of high affinity binding of the IRE to IRE-BP by the oxidation of a sulfhydryl of the IRE-BP. In addition to this effect, hemin also inhibits a wide variety of RNA and DNA binding proteins, restriction endonucleases, and nucleases. Therefore, in vitro, the inhibitory effects of hemin are not limited to the interaction of the IRE-BP and the IRE, but are nonspecific and affect a wide variety of nucleic acid-protein interactions. Any hypothesis on the effects on protein-nucleic acid interactions employing greater than 1 microM concentrations of hemin should be interpreted with caution.

Base Sequence↗

Iron metabolism and its regulation. A review.

Iron metabolism and its molecular regulation are reviewed. Ferric iron is bound to mucin in the stomach and delivered to the duodenum where it can be absorbed. Iron is transported across the apical membrane of the gut mucosa by integrin. Once within the mucosal cell, iron may be stored, utilized in protein synthesis, or exported to the serum. In the serum, iron is carried by transferrin. Diferric transferrin binds to transferrin receptor on the surface of cells and is endocytosed. In the cell, iron is bound to high and low molecular weight ligand and is thought to shuttle iron within the cell. Iron can be stored intracellularly within ferritin, or can be utilized in a number of iron containing proteins synthesized by the mitochondrion, including heme, aconitase, and cytochromes. The first chain of enzymes in the biosynthesis of heme is erythroid 5-aminolevulinate synthase (eALAS). Intracellular iron concentration regulates the synthesis of ferritin, transferrin receptor, and eALAS, thus controlling our iron metabolism. Iron regulates these proteins post-transcriptionally via iron responsive elements (IRE), which are highly conserved stem-loop structures found in messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA), and an IRE binding protein (IRE-BP), which responds to increased intracellular iron concentrations by binding the IRE, and repressing mRNA translation or stabilizing the mRNA, depending on whether the IRE is located in the upstream or downstream untranslated regions of the mRNA. Cellular responses to iron depletion and iron over-load can be explained in terms of these regulatory mechanisms.

Animals↗

Translation of mRNAs with degenerate initiation triplet AUU displays high initiation factor 2 dependence and is subject to initiation factor 3 repression.

The influence of the rare initiation triplet AUU on mRNA translation was investigated by comparing the activity of two pairs of model mRNAs that differ in the length of Shine-Dalgarno and spacer sequences. Irrespective of the initiation triplet (AUG or AUU), all mRNAs had similar template activity in vitro, but translation of AUU mRNAs depended more on initiation factor (IF) 2 and less on IF3 than that of AUG mRNAs. Increasing the IF3/ribosome ratio from 2 to 10 progressively inhibited the AUU mRNAs and abolished their capacity to compete for translating ribosomes with other mRNAs but did not affect activity of the AUG mRNAs. The effects induced by IF3 are from its different influence on on- and off-rates of the transition 30S preinitiation complex<==>30S initiation complex; depending on the nature of the initiation triplet (AUG or AUU) of the mRNA, IF3 shifts the position of equilibrium toward binding or dissociation of fMet-tRNA, respectively. Stimulation of fMet-tRNA binding and dissociation yields superimposable IF3 titration curves that saturate at an IF3/30S ratio of approximately 1, indicating that the data are from the interaction of one molecule of IF3 with the same 30S binding site. Both effects are either lost or strongly reduced with 30S mutants defective in IF3 binding. Translational repression of AUU mRNAs by IF3 is from the factor-dependent dissociation of fMet-tRNA from 30S subunits, which becomes relevant when excess IF3 interferes with the formation of 70S initiation complex, presumably by interacting with 50S subunit.

Bacterial Proteins↗

Yeast Asc1p and mammalian RACK1 are functionally orthologous core 40S ribosomal proteins that repress gene expression.

Translation of mRNA into protein is a fundamental step in eukaryotic gene expression requiring the large (60S) and small (40S) ribosome subunits and associated proteins. By modern proteomic approaches, we previously identified a novel 40S-associated protein named Asc1p in budding yeast and RACK1 in mammals. The goals of this study were to establish Asc1p or RACK1 as a core conserved eukaryotic ribosomal protein and to determine the role of Asc1p or RACK1 in translational control. We provide biochemical, evolutionary, genetic, and functional evidence showing that Asc1p or RACK1 is indeed a conserved core component of the eukaryotic ribosome. We also show that purified Asc1p-deficient ribosomes have increased translational activity compared to that of wild-type yeast ribosomes. Further, we demonstrate that asc1Delta null strains have increased levels of specific proteins in vivo and that this molecular phenotype is complemented by either Asc1p or RACK1. Our data suggest that one of Asc1p's or RACK1's functions is to repress gene expression.

Adaptor Proteins, Signal Transducing↗

Vitamin B12 repression of the cob operon in Salmonella typhimurium: translational control of the cbiA gene.

Expression of the cob operon is repressed by B12 via a post-transcriptional control mechanism which requires sequence elements within the leader region of the mRNA and the first gene of the operon, the cbiA gene. Here we show that B12 repression of cbiA gene expression occurs at the level of translation initiation through sequestration of the ribosomal binding site (rbs) in an RNA hairpin. Analysis of mutations that destabilize or restabilize the secondary structure demonstrates that folding of the hairpin is essential for repression. The existence of the hairpin was confirmed by a secondary structure analysis of RNA from the wild type and three mutants. Deletions that remove the upstream part of the leader confer a drastic reduction in translation efficiency. This low-level translation is caused by the hairpin, as indicated by the finding that suppressor mutations that destabilize the hairpin restore efficient translation. Thus, the native upstream RNA functions as a translation enhancer and acts to relieve the hairpin's inhibitory effect on translation initiation. The inhibitory effect of the hairpin was confirmed by a ribosomal toeprinting analysis. We propose that the translational control of the cbiA gene mediates repression of the entire cob operon.

Base Sequence↗

A segment of mRNA encoding the leader peptide of the CPA1 gene confers repression by arginine on a heterologous yeast gene transcript.

The expression of the yeast gene CPA1, which encodes the small subunit of the arginine pathway carbamoylphosphate synthetase, is repressed by arginine at a translational level. CPA1 mRNA contains a 250-nucleotide-long leader which includes a 25-codon upstream open reading frame (uORF). Oligonucleotide site-directed mutagenesis of this uORF as well as sequencing of constitutive cis-dominant mutations has suggested that the leader peptide product of the CPA1 uORF is an essential negative element for repression of the CPA1 gene by arginine. In this work, a series of deletions affecting the regions 5' and 3' to the uORF in the leader sequence was constructed. The arginine-dependent repression of CPA1 was little affected in these constructions, indicating that these regions are not essential for the regulatory response. This conclusion was further supported by the finding that inserting the mRNA segment encoding the leader peptide sequence of CPA1 in the leader sequence of another gene, namely, GCN4, places this gene under arginine repression. Similarly, the behavior of fusions of the leader sequence of CPA1 with those of ARG4 or GAL10 confirmed that the regions of this leader located upstream and downstream from the uORF are dispensable for the regulation by arginine. Finally, a set of substitution mutations which modify the uORF nucleotide sequence while leaving unchanged the corresponding amino acid sequence was constructed. The mutations did not affect the repression of CPA1 by arginine. The data presented in this paper consequently agree with the conclusion that the leader peptide itself is the main element required for the translational repression of CPA1.

Amino Acid Sequence↗

The structure of a ribosomal protein S8/spc operon mRNA complex.

In bacteria, translation of all the ribosomal protein cistrons in the spc operon mRNA is repressed by the binding of the product of one of them, S8, to an internal sequence at the 5' end of the L5 cistron. The way in which the first two genes of the spc operon are regulated, retroregulation, is mechanistically distinct from translational repression by S8 of the genes from L5 onward. A 2.8 A resolution crystal structure has been obtained of Escherichia coli S8 bound to this site. Despite sequence differences, the structure of this complex is almost identical to that of the S8/helix 21 complex seen in the small ribosomal subunit, consistent with the hypothesis that autogenous regulation of ribosomal protein synthesis results from conformational similarities between mRNAs and rRNAs. S8 binding must repress the translation of its own mRNA by inhibiting the formation of a ribosomal initiation complex at the start of the L5 cistron.

Base Sequence↗

Cis-acting sequences in the 5'-untranslated region of the ribosomal protein A1 mRNA mediate its translational regulation during early embryogenesis of Drosophila.

The rate of ribosomal (r)-protein synthesis in the early Drosophila embryo is low despite the presence of abundant, maternally supplied r-protein mRNAs. This low rate is due to specific repression of r-protein mRNA translation. In contrast to r-protein mRNAs, most other mRNAs are efficiently translated in the early embryo. Here we report on the identification of cis-acting sequences that mediate translational repression of the r-protein A1 (rpA1) mRNA. Chimeric genes containing sequences from the translationally regulated rpA1 mRNA fused to the constitutively translated alpha-tubulin mRNA were constructed and transformed into the Drosophila germ line. Translation of the corresponding hybrid mRNAs was measured in ovaries and embryos of the transgenic flies. The results indicated that a 89-nucleotide sequence in the untranslated rpA1 mRNA leader is by itself sufficient to confer full translational regulation to a heterologous mRNA.

Animals↗

Mitochondrial translation products during release from glucose repression in Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

Mitochondrial protein synthesis was studied during release from glucose repression in Saccharomyces cerevisiae cells bearing different mitochondrial genomes. The increase in the rate of the synthesis of mitochondrial translation products was analyzed during respiratory induction. Different kinetic patterns were found for strains having a different structure of mitochondrial mosaic genes, even when the nuclear background was the same. A very limited response of the synthesis of the var1 ribosomal protein to inducing conditions was observed.

Cycloheximide↗

Mutational analysis of the mRNA operator for T4 DNA polymerase.

Biosynthesis of bacteriophage T4 DNA polymerase is autogenously regulated at the translational level. The enzyme, product of gene 43, represses its own translation by binding to its mRNA 5' to the initiator AUG at a 36-40 nucleotide segment that includes the Shine-Dalgarno sequence and a putative RNA hairpin structure consisting of a 5-base-pair stem and an 8-base loop. We constructed mutations that either disrupted the stem or altered specific loop residues of the hairpin and found that many of these mutations, including single-base changes in the loop sequence, diminished binding of purified T4 DNA polymerase to its RNA in vitro (as measured by a gel retardation assay) and derepressed synthesis of the enzyme in vivo (as measured in T4 infections and by recombinant-plasmid-mediated expression). In vitro effects, however, were not always congruent with in vivo effects. For example, stem pairing with a sequence other than wild-type resulted in normal protein binding in vitro but derepression of protein synthesis in vivo. Similarly, a C----A change in the loop had a small effect in vitro and a strong effect in vivo. In contrast, an A----U change near the base of the hairpin that was predicted to increase the length of the base-paired stem had small effects both in vitro and in vivo. The results suggest that interaction of T4 DNA polymerase with its structured RNA operator depends on the spatial arrangement of specific nucleotide residues and is subject to modulation in vivo.

Base Sequence↗

Expression of the repA1 gene of IncFII plasmid NR1 is translationally coupled to expression of an overlapping leader peptide.

Examination of a group of mutants of plasmid NR1 that had lost the expression of IncFII plasmid incompatibility (Inc-) revealed a group that had also lost replication proficiency (Rep-). These mutants were obtained from plasmids in which the NR1 replication control region was present in a cointegrate with plasmid pBR322. Whereas the wild-type parental cointegrate plasmid was capable of replicating in a polA host owing to the PolA independence of NR1 replication, the mutants were not able to transform a polA host. Losses of both expression of IncFII plasmid incompatibility and replication proficiency were found to result from the same single base-pair substitution in four independently isolated Inc- Rep- mutants. The mutation inactivates promoter PE for the transcription of RNA-E, a trans-acting repressor of translation of the essential RepA1 replication initiation protein of NR1. Although the loss of RNA-E synthesis had been expected to increase the expression of repA1, the efficiency of translation of repA1 mRNA from these mutants was at least 100-fold lower than that from the wild type, as revealed by repA1-lacZ translational fusions. The PE mutation introduced a stop codon into a 24-amino-acid reading frame that precedes the repA1 gene and terminates just 2 bp downstream from the repA1 start codon. This putative leader peptide was also expressed in a lacZ translational fusion, and its expression was reduced by a factor of 10(4) by the PE mutation. The expression of the leader peptide and the expression of repA1 were regulated by RNA-E. These results suggest that the expression of repA1 is coupled to the translation of the leader peptide and that the repression of repA1 translation by RNA-E may occur via inhibition of the translation of the leader peptide.

Amino Acid Sequence↗

The putative iron-responsive element in the human erythroid 5-aminolevulinate synthase mRNA mediates translational control.

The 52-nucleotide 5'-untranslated region of the human erythroid 5-aminolevulinate synthase mRNA contains a 28-nucleotide iron-responsive element-like stem-loop motif. We fused the 5'-untranslated region upstream to the coding sequence of the human growth hormone cDNA. A chimeric construct containing a mutated variant of the presumptive iron-responsive element was similarly synthesized. Translation of the wild type chimeric transcript was markedly repressed (approximately 95%) in rabbit reticulocyte lysates as opposed to the mutant. Both transcripts translated with comparable efficiency in wheat germ extracts. Purified placental iron regulatory factor selectively and markedly inhibited translation of the wild type chimeric transcript (> 90%) when tested in wheat germ extracts. By contrast, translations of either the mutant chimeric transcript or other control mRNA species were unaffected. The proximal position of the iron-responsive element relative to the cap site was shown to be important for translational control, in vitro. Our studies suggest that interaction of the iron regulatory factor with the iron-responsive element sterically hinders formation of the preinitiation complex, resulting in translational repression. Thus inactivation of the repressor protein by critical levels of iron or heme would trigger translation of this mRNA in erythroid cells. Consequently, protoporphyrin and heme synthesis would be subtly coordinated with iron supply.

5-Aminolevulinate Synthetase↗