Telomerase RNAs in land plants

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Authors

FAJKUS Petr PEŠKA Vratislav ZÁVODNÍK Michal FOJTOVÁ Miloslava FULNEČKOVÁ Jana DOBIAS Šimon KILAR Agata Magdalena DVOŘÁČKOVÁ Martina ZACHOVÁ Dagmar NEČASOVÁ Ivona SIMS Jason SÝKOROVÁ Eva FAJKUS Jiří

Year of publication 2019
Type Article in Periodical
Magazine / Source Nucleic acids research
MU Faculty or unit

Central European Institute of Technology

Citation
Web Webová stránka článku v časopise NAR
Doi http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkz695
Keywords Telomerase RNA subunit; plant
Description To elucidate the molecular nature of evolutionary changes of telomeres in the plant order Asparagales, we aimed to characterize telomerase RNA subunits (TRs) in these plants. The unusually long telomere repeat unit in Allium plants (12 nt) allowed us to identify TRs in transcriptomic data of representative species of the Allium genus. Orthologous TRs were then identified in Asparagales plants harbouring telomere DNA composed of TTAGGG (human type) or TTTAGGG (Arabidopsis-type) repeats. Further, we identified TRs across the land plant phylogeny, including common model plants, crop plants, and plants with unusual telomeres. Several lines of functional testing demonstrate the templating telomerase function of the identified TRs and disprove a functionality of the only previously reported plant telomerase RNA in Arabidopsis thaliana. Importantly, our results change the existing paradigm in plant telomere biology which has been based on the existence of a relatively conserved telomerase reverse transcriptase subunit (TERT) associating with highly divergent TRs even between closely related plant taxa. The finding of a monophyletic origin of genuine TRs across land plants opens the possibility to identify TRs directly in transcriptomic or genomic data and/or predict telomere sequences synthesized according to the respective TR template region.
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