Xu Yan, Kimura Takashi, Komiyama Makoto
Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo, 4-6-1 Komaba, Meguro-ku, Tokyo 153-8904, Japan.
Nucleic Acids Symp Ser (Oxf). 2008(52):169-70. doi: 10.1093/nass/nrn086.
For a long time, telomeres have been considered to be transcriptionally silent. Recently, Azzalin et al. demonstrated that telomeres are transcribed into telomeric repeat-containing RNA (TERRA) in mammalian cells. The telomere RNA was found to localize at the telomere DNA. These findings raise a possibility of that telomere RNA may be involved in an intermolecular G-quadruplex with the telomere DNA. In the current studies, we found that human telomere RNA and telomere DNA sequence can form hybrid-type parallel G-quadruplex structure. These results provide valuable information to allow understanding of the roles of human telomeric RNA in chromosome ends regulation and protection.
长期以来，端粒一直被认为是转录沉默的。最近，阿扎林等人证明，在哺乳动物细胞中，端粒被转录为含端粒重复序列的RNA（TERRA）。人们发现端粒RNA定位于端粒DNA处。这些发现增加了端粒RNA可能与端粒DNA形成分子间G-四链体的可能性。在当前的研究中，我们发现人类端粒RNA和端粒DNA序列可以形成杂交型平行G-四链体结构。这些结果为理解人类端粒RNA在染色体末端调控和保护中的作用提供了有价值的信息。
