Transcriptional control during development

Sequence homologies in the protamine gene family of rainbow trout

We have sequenced five different rainbow trout protamine genes plus their flanking regions. The genes are not clustered and do not contain intervening sequences. There is an extremely high degree of sequence conservation in the coding and 3' untranslated regions of the gene. Downstream sequences exhibit little homology though conserved regions are found 250 base pairs 3' to the gene. There are four regions upstream of the gene that are highly conserved in the six clones, including the canonical Goldberg - Hogness box which is 45 base pairs 5' to the coding region. A second homologous region is found 90 bases upstream. Although in the same approximate location as the CAAT box found upstream of other genes, it does not contain the canonical CAAT sequence. Further upstream of the protamine genes at -115 there is an A-T rich sequence while a 25 base pair conserved sequence is located 150 bases upstream. In addition we report the presence of a potential Z-DNA region of predominantly A-C repeats approximately one kilobase downstream of one of the genes.

An assessment of the evidence for the role of ribonucleoprotein particles in the maturation of eukaryote mRNA

This article has sought to draw together, on the one hand, what is known of mRNA processing and its control and, on the other hand, what is known of the structure and validity of hnRNP and snRNP particles. At the same time, it has attempted to synthesize these two themes into a critical assessment of the evidence which suggests that the particles are intimately involved in processing. It cannot be said that the case is proven. The evidence is compelling but circumstantial. The last few years have seen the development of the first in vitro splicing systems (Weingartner and Keller, 1981; Goldenberg and Raskus, 1981; Kole and Weissman, 1982), the isolation of monoclonal antibodies to defined snRNP (Lerner et al., 1981a; Billings et al., 1982) and hnRNP proteins (Hugle et al., 1982), and the ability to use artificial lipid vesicles to transfer antisera (Lenk et al., 1982) and radioactive snRNA (Gross and Cetron, 1982) into cells. It is to be hoped that further refinements of these and other techniques will allow us to solve this, one of the major outstanding problems of molecular biology.