retrieval of missing spliced leader in dinoflagellates检索失踪拼接鞭毛藻类的领导者.pdfVIP

Retrieval of Missing Spliced Leader in Dinoflagellates Huan Zhang, Senjie Lin* Department of Marine Sciences, University of Connecticut, Groton, Connecticut, United States of America Abstract Spliced leader (SL) trans-splicing has recently been shown to be a common mRNA processing mechanism in dinoflagellates, in which a short (22-nt) sequence, DCCGUAGCCAUUUUGGCUCAAG (D = U, A, or G), is transplanted from the 59-end of a small non-coding RNA (SL RNA) to the 59 end of mRNA molecules. The widespread existence of the mechanism in dinoflagellates has been demonstrated by detection of this SL (DinoSL) in a wide phylogenetic range of dinoflagellates. Furthermore, the presence of DinoSL in the transcripts of highly diverse groups of nuclear-encoded genes has led us to postulate that SL trans-splicing is universal in dinoflagellate nuclear genome. However, some observations inconsistent to this postulation have been reported, exemplified by a recent article reporting apparent absence of DinoSL in the transcripts of some nuclear-encoded genes in Amphidinium carterae . Absence of SL in these gene transcripts would have important implication on gene regulation in dinoflagellates and utility of DinoSL as a universal dinoflagellate-specific primer to study dinoflagellate transcriptomics. In this study, we re-examined transcripts of these genes and found that all of them actually contained DinoSL. Therefore, results to date are consistent to our initial postulation that DinoSL occurs in all dinoflagellate nuclear-encoded mRNAs. Citation: Zhang H, Lin S (2009) Retrieval of Missing Spliced Leader in Dinoflagellates. PLoS ONE 4(1): e4129. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0004129 Editor: Christophe Herman, Baylor College of Medicine, United States of America Received October 15, 2008; Accepted December 4, 2008; Published January 5, 2009 Copyright: 2009 Zhang et al.