Exclusion of Exon 2 Is a Common mRNA Splice Variant of Primate Telomerase Reverse Transcriptases

Telomeric sequences are added by an enzyme called telomerase that is made of two components: a catalytic protein called telomerase reverse transcriptase (TERT) and an integral RNA template (TR). Telomerase expression is tightly regulated at each step of gene expression, including alternative splicin...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Withers, Johanna B., Ashvetiya, Tamara, Beemon, Karen L.
Format: Online
Language:English
Published: Public Library of Science 2012
Online Access:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3480478/
id pubmed-3480478
recordtype oai_dc
spelling pubmed-34804782012-10-29 Exclusion of Exon 2 Is a Common mRNA Splice Variant of Primate Telomerase Reverse Transcriptases Withers, Johanna B. Ashvetiya, Tamara Beemon, Karen L. Research Article Telomeric sequences are added by an enzyme called telomerase that is made of two components: a catalytic protein called telomerase reverse transcriptase (TERT) and an integral RNA template (TR). Telomerase expression is tightly regulated at each step of gene expression, including alternative splicing of TERT mRNA. While over a dozen different alternative splicing events have been reported for human TERT mRNA, these were all in the 3′ half of the coding region. We were interested in examining splicing of the 5′ half of hTERT mRNA, especially since exon 2 is unusually large (1.3 kb). Internal mammalian exons are usually short, typically only 50 to 300 nucleotides, and most long internal exons are alternatively processed. We used quantitative RT-PCR and high-throughput sequencing data to examine the variety and quantity of mRNA species generated from the hTERT locus. We determined that there are approximately 20–40 molecules of hTERT mRNA per cell in the A431 human cell line. In addition, we describe an abundant, alternatively-spliced mRNA variant that excludes TERT exon 2 and was seen in other primates. This variant causes a frameshift and results in translation termination in exon 3, generating a 12 kDa polypeptide. Public Library of Science 2012-10-24 /pmc/articles/PMC3480478/ /pubmed/23110161 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0048016 Text en © 2012 Withers et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
repository_type Open Access Journal
institution_category Foreign Institution
institution US National Center for Biotechnology Information
building NCBI PubMed
collection Online Access
language English
format Online
author Withers, Johanna B.
Ashvetiya, Tamara
Beemon, Karen L.
spellingShingle Withers, Johanna B.
Ashvetiya, Tamara
Beemon, Karen L.
Exclusion of Exon 2 Is a Common mRNA Splice Variant of Primate Telomerase Reverse Transcriptases
author_facet Withers, Johanna B.
Ashvetiya, Tamara
Beemon, Karen L.
author_sort Withers, Johanna B.
title Exclusion of Exon 2 Is a Common mRNA Splice Variant of Primate Telomerase Reverse Transcriptases
title_short Exclusion of Exon 2 Is a Common mRNA Splice Variant of Primate Telomerase Reverse Transcriptases
title_full Exclusion of Exon 2 Is a Common mRNA Splice Variant of Primate Telomerase Reverse Transcriptases
title_fullStr Exclusion of Exon 2 Is a Common mRNA Splice Variant of Primate Telomerase Reverse Transcriptases
title_full_unstemmed Exclusion of Exon 2 Is a Common mRNA Splice Variant of Primate Telomerase Reverse Transcriptases
title_sort exclusion of exon 2 is a common mrna splice variant of primate telomerase reverse transcriptases
description Telomeric sequences are added by an enzyme called telomerase that is made of two components: a catalytic protein called telomerase reverse transcriptase (TERT) and an integral RNA template (TR). Telomerase expression is tightly regulated at each step of gene expression, including alternative splicing of TERT mRNA. While over a dozen different alternative splicing events have been reported for human TERT mRNA, these were all in the 3′ half of the coding region. We were interested in examining splicing of the 5′ half of hTERT mRNA, especially since exon 2 is unusually large (1.3 kb). Internal mammalian exons are usually short, typically only 50 to 300 nucleotides, and most long internal exons are alternatively processed. We used quantitative RT-PCR and high-throughput sequencing data to examine the variety and quantity of mRNA species generated from the hTERT locus. We determined that there are approximately 20–40 molecules of hTERT mRNA per cell in the A431 human cell line. In addition, we describe an abundant, alternatively-spliced mRNA variant that excludes TERT exon 2 and was seen in other primates. This variant causes a frameshift and results in translation termination in exon 3, generating a 12 kDa polypeptide.
publisher Public Library of Science
publishDate 2012
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3480478/
_version_ 1611918658645262336