A host factor supports retrotransposition of the TRE5-A population in Dictyostelium cells by suppressing an Argonaute protein
Abstract
In the compact and haploid genome of Dictyostelium discoideum control of transposon activity is of particular importance to maintain viability. The non-long terminal repeat retrotransposon TRE5-A amplifies continuously in D. discoideum cells even though it produces considerable amounts of minus-strand (antisense) RNA in the presence of an active RNA interference machinery. Removal of the host-encoded C-module-binding factor (CbfA) from D. discoideum cells resulted in a more than 90 % reduction of both plus- and minus-strand RNA of TRE5-A and a strong decrease of the retrotransposition activity of the cellular TRE5-A population. Transcriptome analysis revealed an approximately 230-fold overexpression of the gene coding for the Argonaute-like protein AgnC in a CbfA-depleted mutant. The D. discoideum genome contains orthologs of RNA-dependent RNA polymerases, Dicer-like proteins, and Argonaute proteins that are supposed to represent RNA interference pathways. We analyzed available mutants in these genes for altered expression of TRE5-A. We found that the retrotransposon was overexpressed in mutants lacking the Argonaute proteins AgnC and AgnE. Because the agnC gene is barely expressed in wild-type cells, probably due to repression...Continue Reading
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