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A unique feature of RNA polymerase II (RNA pol II) is its long C-terminal extension, called the carboxy-terminal domain (CTD). The well-studied eukaryotes possess a tandemly repeated 7-amino-acid sequence, called the canonical CTD, which orchestrates various steps in mRNA synthesis. Many eukaryotes possess a CTD devoid of repeats, appropriately called a non-canonical CTD, which performs completely unknown functions. Trypanosoma brucei, the etiologic agent of African Sleeping Sickness, deploys an RNA pol II that contains a non-canonical CTD to accomplish an unusual transcriptional program; all protein-coding genes are transcribed as part of a polygenic precursor mRNA (pre-mRNA) that is initiated within a several-kilobase-long region, called the transcription start site (TSS), which is upstream of the first protein-coding gene in the polygenic array. In this report, we show that the non-canonical CTD of T. brucei RNA pol II is important for normal protein-coding gene expression, likely directing RNA pol II to the TSSs within the genome. Our work reveals the presence of a primordial CTD code within eukarya and indicates that proper recognition of the chromatin landscape is a central function of this RNA pol II-distinguishing domain. © The Author(s) 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Nucleic Acids Research.

Citation

Anish Das, Mahrukh Banday, Michael A Fisher, Yun-Juan Chang, Jeffrey Rosenfeld, Vivian Bellofatto. An essential domain of an early-diverged RNA polymerase II functions to accurately decode a primitive chromatin landscape. Nucleic acids research. 2017 Jul 27;45(13):7886-7896

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PMID: 28575287

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