Document Type

Article

Publication Date

9-24-2008

Publication Title

BioMed Central Genomics

Department

Geisel School of Medicine

Abstract

The ribosome biogenesis (RiBi) genes encode a highly-conserved eukaryotic set of nucleolar proteins involved in rRNA transcription, assembly, processing, and export from the nucleus. While the mode of regulation of this suite of genes has been studied in the yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, how this gene set is coordinately regulated in the larger and more complex metazoan genomes is not understood. Here we present genome-wide analyses indicating that a distinct mode of RiBi regulation co-evolved with the E(CG)-binding, Myc:Max bHLH heterodimer complex in a stem-holozoan, the ancestor of both Metazoa and Choanoflagellata, the protozoan group most closely related to animals. These results show that this mode of regulation, characterized by an E(CG)-bearing core-promoter, is specific to almost all of the known genes involved in ribosome biogenesis in these genomes. Interestingly, this holozoan RiBi promoter signature is absent in nematode genomes, which have not only secondarily lost Myc but are marked by invariant cell lineages typically producing small body plans of 1000 somatic cells. Furthermore, a detailed analysis of 10 fungal genomes shows that this holozoan signature in RiBi genes is not found in hemiascomycete fungi, which evolved their own unique regulatory signature for the RiBi regulon.

DOI

10.1186/1471-2164-9-442

Original Citation

Brown SJ, Cole MD, Erives AJ. Evolution of the holozoan ribosome biogenesis regulon. BMC Genomics. 2008 Sep 24;9:442. doi: 10.1186/1471-2164-9-442. PMID: 18816399; PMCID: PMC2570694.

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