A family of poly(U) polymerases (original) (raw)

Jae Eun Kwak and
Marvin Wickens
Department of Biochemistry, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA

Abstract

The GLD-2 family of poly(A) polymerases add successive AMP monomers to the 3′ end of specific RNAs, forming a poly(A) tail. Here, we identify a new group of GLD-2-related nucleotidyl transferases from Arabidopsis, Schizosaccharomyces pombe, Caenorhabditis elegans, and humans. Like GLD-2, these enzymes are template independent and add nucleotides to the 3′ end of an RNA substrate. However, these new enzymes, which we refer to as poly(U) polymerases, add poly(U) rather than poly(A) to their RNA substrates.

Footnotes

Reprint requests to: Marvin Wickens, Department of Biochemistry, 433 Babcock Drive, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706, USA; e-mail: wickens{at}biochem.wisc.edu; fax: (608) 262-9108.
Article published online ahead of print. Article and publication date are at http://www.rnajournal.org/cgi/doi/10.1261/rna.514007.
↵1 For simplicity, we refer to proteins from different species using the abbreviated genus and species, then a number (e.g, Hs1); At, Arabidopsis thaliana; Ce, Caenorhabditis elegans; Sp, Schizzosaccharomyces pombe; Sc, Saccharomyces cerevisiae; Mm, Mus musculus; Hs, Homo sapiens. For proteins that already have a formal name, we use capital letters (e.g., TRF5), sometimes preceded by the species (e.g., ScTRF5), as needed for clarity. Gene names are in lowercase italics.
- Received February 16, 2007.
- Accepted March 1, 2007.