Here.
This story is part of a fundamental rethinking taking place in genomic science. In 2009, members of the FANTOM Consortium project reported that an important fraction of mammalian transcriptomes—meaning the RNA transcribed from the genome—consists of transcripts derived from retrotransposon elements, vestiges of ancient retroviruses from the same family as HIV that have in the past been considered to only parasite the genome. However, the biological function of these “jumping DNA”-associated RNA transcripts remained unknown.
In the current study on embryonic stem (ES) cells and induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells using four high-throughput methods including cap analysis gene expression (CAGE), the researchers found that thousands of transcripts in stem cells that have not yet been annotated are transcribed from retrotransposons, presumably to elicit nuclear functions. These transcripts were found to be expressed in stem cells, but not differentiated cells. Importantly, the work showed that several of these transcripts are involved in the maintenance of pluripotency, since degrading several of them using RNA interference caused iPS cells to lose their pluripotency and differentiate.
These transcripts appear to have been recruited, surprisingly both in the human and mouse genome, where they are used to maintain the pluripotency of stem cells. Somehow, organisms including humans appear to have recruited viral elements into their genome in a way that helps to maintain the pluripotency of stem cells that allow them to regenerate. Why this is so remains a mystery for future investigation. More.
It’s not like recruitment strategies could be part of the kit or anything, right?
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