Abstract
Clone pB41-6 (2.5 kb) contains sequences that are repeated 200-300 times in the Dictyostelium genome; about 40 of these sequences are part of a 4.5 kb repeated and apparently transposable genomic element. Clone pB41-6 hybridizes to a large number of cytoplasmic polyadenylated RNAs whose accumulation begins in the first hour of differentiation. In order to understand the regulation of these repeated sequences, we have sequenced pB41-6. It contains three long open reading frames in the "sense" strand. Remarkably, about 70 bases upstream of the transcription initiation site is a sequence identical to that responsible for induction of the Drosophila heat shock genes. A search of published sequences also generated a similar sequence upstream of one of the Dictyostelium actin genes. Indeed, we found that both pB41-6-related RNAs and actin mRNAs are increased as a result of heat shocking growing cells, and that transcription of pB41-6 sequences is induced by heat shock. Thus Dictyostelium contains a set of genes that are induced as a response to heat shock or to the stresses that trigger the initiation of development. We show here that the principal component of this "stress" is not amino acid starvation but the high density of the cells.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 997-1005 |
| Number of pages | 9 |
| Journal | Cell |
| Volume | 34 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Oct 1983 |
Funding
This work was supported by grant 79.00839.PCM from the NSF. We thank Miriam Boucher for her patience in the preparation of this manuscript, and Naomi Cohen for expert technical assistance. We also thank Mr. Jay Morgenstern for the backward-forwards sequencing. The costs of publication of this article were defrayed in part by the payment of page charges. This article must therefore be hereby marked “advertisement” in accordance with 18 U.S.C. Section 1734 solely to Indicate this fact.
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology