Origin of RNA Polymerase II pause in eumetazoans: Insights from Hydra (original) (raw)
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Piwi-interacting RNAs (piRNAs) control transposable elements widely across metazoans but have rapidly evolving biogenesis pathways. In Caenorhabditis elegans, almost all piRNA loci are found within two 3Mb clusters on Chromosome IV. Each piRNA locus possesses an upstream motif that recruits RNA polymerase II to produce a ~28 nt precursor transcript. Here, we use comparative epigenomics across nematodes to gain insight into piRNA biogenesis. We show that the piRNA upstream motif is derived from core promoter elements controlling snRNA biogenesis. We describe two alternative modes of piRNA organisation in nematodes: in C. elegans and closely related nematodes, piRNAs are clustered within repressive H3K27me3 chromatin, whilst in other species, typified by Pristionchus pacificus, piRNAs are distributed genome-wide within introns of actively transcribed genes. In both groups, piRNA production depends on downstream sequence signals associated with RNA polymerase II pausing, which synergis...
Regulation of transcription, the synthesis of RNA from a DNA template, is one of the most important steps in control of cell growth and differentiation. Transcription is carried out by the enzyme RNA polymerase (Pol) along with other factors termed general transcription factors. The general factors are involved in recognition of promoter sequences, the response to regulatory factors and conformational changes essential to the activity of Pol during the transcription cycle 1,2 . Advances made over the past 11 years 3-5 have revealed the structures of bacterial and eukaryotic Pols, several of the key general transcription factors, and most recently, structures and models of Pol II interacting with general transcription factors 6-8 . Combined with biochemical and genetic studies, these structures provide emerging views on the mechanism of the transcription machinery, the dynamic nature of protein-protein and protein-DNA interactions involved, and the mechanism of transcriptional regulation.
Evolution of promoter-proximal pausing enabled a new layer of transcription control
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory), 2023
Promoter-proximal pausing of RNA polymerase II (Pol II) is a key regulatory step during transcription. To understand the evolution and function of pausing, we analyzed transcription in 20 organisms across the tree of life. Unicellular eukaryotes have a slow acceleration of Pol II near transcription start sites that matured into a longer and more focused pause in metazoans. Increased pause residence time coincides with the evolution of new subunits in the NELF and 7SK complexes. In mammals, depletion of NELF reverts a focal pause to a proto-paused-like state driven in part by DNA sequence. Loss of this focal pause compromises transcriptional activation for a set of heat shock genes. Overall, we discovered how pausing evolved and increased regulatory complexity in metazoans.
A global change in RNA polymerase II pausing during the Drosophila midblastula transition
2013
Massive zygotic transcription begins in many organisms during the midblastula transition when the cell cycle of the dividing egg slows down. A few genes are transcribed before this stage but how this differential activation is accomplished is still an open question. We have performed ChIP-seq experiments on tightly staged Drosophila embryos and show that massive recruitment of RNA polymerase II (Pol II) with widespread pausing occurs de novo during the midblastula transition. However, ∼100 genes are strongly occupied by Pol II before this timepoint and most of them do not show Pol II pausing, consistent with a requirement for rapid transcription during the fast nuclear cycles. This global change in Pol II pausing correlates with distinct core promoter elements and associates a TATA-enriched promoter with the rapid early transcription. This suggests that promoters are differentially used during the zygotic genome activation, presumably because they have distinct dynamic properties.
RNA polymerase II pauses and associates with pre-mRNA processing factors at both ends of genes
Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, 2007
We investigated co-transcriptional recruitment of pre-mRNA processing factors to human genes. Capping factors associate with paused RNA pol II at the 5′ ends of quiescent genes. They also track throughout actively transcribed genes, and accumulate with paused polymerase in the 3′ flanking region. 3′ processing factors CstF and CPSF are maximally recruited 0.5-1.5 kb downstream of poly (A) sites where they coincide with capping factors, Spt5, and Ser2 hyperphosphorylated, paused pol II. 3′ end processing factors also localize at transcription start sites, and this early recruitment is enhanced after polymerase arrest with DRB. These results suggest that promoters may help specify recruitment of 3′ end processing factors. We propose a dual pausing model where elongation arrests near the transcription start site and in the 3′ flank to allow co-transcriptional processing by factors recruited to the pol II ternary complex.
Genetics, 2011
RNA polymerase (pol) II establishes many protein–protein interactions with transcriptional regulators to coordinate different steps of transcription. Although some of these interactions have been well described, little is known about the existence of RNA pol II regions involved in contact with transcriptional regulators. We hypothesize that conserved regions on the surface of RNA pol II contact transcriptional regulators. We identified such an RNA pol II conserved region that includes the majority of the “foot” domain and identified interactions of this region with Mvp1, a protein required for sorting proteins to the vacuole, and Spo14, a phospholipase D. Deletion of MVP1 and SPO14 affects the transcription of their target genes and increases phosphorylation of Ser5 in the carboxy-terminal domain (CTD). Genetic, phenotypic, and functional analyses point to a role for these proteins in transcriptional initiation and/or early elongation, consistent with their genetic interactions with...
Nucleic acids research, 2017
A unique feature of RNA polymerase II (RNA pol II) is its long C-terminal extension, called the carboxy-terminal domain (CTD). The well-studied eukaryotes possess a tandemly repeated 7-amino-acid sequence, called the canonical CTD, which orchestrates various steps in mRNA synthesis. Many eukaryotes possess a CTD devoid of repeats, appropriately called a non-canonical CTD, which performs completely unknown functions. Trypanosoma brucei, the etiologic agent of African Sleeping Sickness, deploys an RNA pol II that contains a non-canonical CTD to accomplish an unusual transcriptional program; all protein-coding genes are transcribed as part of a polygenic precursor mRNA (pre-mRNA) that is initiated within a several-kilobase-long region, called the transcription start site (TSS), which is upstream of the first protein-coding gene in the polygenic array. In this report, we show that the non-canonical CTD of T. brucei RNA pol II is important for normal protein-coding gene expression, likel...
RNA polymerase II pausing during development
Development, 2014
The rapid expansion of genomics methods has enabled developmental biologists to address fundamental questions of developmental gene regulation on a genome-wide scale. These efforts have demonstrated that transcription of developmental control genes by RNA polymerase II (Pol II) is commonly regulated at the transition to productive elongation, resulting in the promoter-proximal accumulation of transcriptionally engaged but paused Pol II prior to gene induction. Here we review the mechanisms and possible functions of Pol II pausing and their implications for development.