scholarly journals Structure of Drosophila melanogaster ARC1 reveals a repurposed molecule with characteristics of retroviral Gag

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. eaay6354 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew A. Cottee ◽  
Suzanne C. Letham ◽  
George R. Young ◽  
Jonathan P. Stoye ◽  
Ian A. Taylor

The tetrapod neuronal protein ARC and its Drosophila melanogaster homolog, dARC1, have important but differing roles in neuronal development. Both are thought to originate through exaptation of ancient Ty3/Gypsy retrotransposon Gag, with their novel function relying on an original capacity for self-assembly and encapsidation of nucleic acids. Here, we present the crystal structure of dARC1 CA and examine the relationship between dARC1, mammalian ARC, and the CA protein of circulating retroviruses. We show that while the overall architecture is highly related to that of orthoretroviral and spumaretroviral CA, there are substantial deviations in both amino- and carboxyl-terminal domains, potentially affecting recruitment of partner proteins and particle assembly. The degree of sequence and structural divergence suggests that Ty3/Gypsy Gag has been exapted on two separate occasions and that, although mammalian ARC and dARC1 share functional similarity, the structures have undergone different adaptations after appropriation into the tetrapod and insect genomes.

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew A. Cottee ◽  
Suzanne C. Letham ◽  
George R. Young ◽  
Jonathan P. Stoye ◽  
Ian A. Taylor

ABSTRACTThe tetrapod neuronal protein ARC and its D. melanogaster homologue, dARC1, have important but differing roles in neuronal development. Both are thought to originate through exaptation of ancient Ty3/Gypsy retrotransposon Gag genes, with their novel function relying on an original capacity for self-assembly and encapsidation of nucleic acids. Here, we present the crystal structure of dARC1 CA and examine the relationship between dARC1, mammalian ARC and the CA protein of circulating retroviruses. We show that whilst the overall architecture is highly related to that of orthoretroviral and spumaretroviral CA, there are significant deviations in both N- and C-terminal domains, potentially affecting recruitment of partner proteins and particle assembly. The degree of sequence and structural divergence suggests that Ty3/Gypsy Gag has been exapted on two separate occasions and that, although mammalian ARC and dARC1 share functional similarity, the structures have undergone different adaptations after appropriation into the tetrapod and insect genomes.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beatriz Matarranz ◽  
Goutam Ghosh ◽  
Ramesh Kandanelli ◽  
Angel Sampedro ◽  
Kalathil K. Kartha ◽  
...  

We unravel the relationship between conjugation length and self-assembly behaviour of oligophenyleneethynylenes (OPEs).


Soft Matter ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jiawei Lu ◽  
Xiangyu Bu ◽  
Xinghua Zhang ◽  
Bing Liu

The shapes of colloidal particles are crucial to the self-assembled superstructures. Understanding the relationship between the shapes of building blocks and the resulting crystal structures is an important fundamental question....


Molecules ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (11) ◽  
pp. 3310
Author(s):  
Shengda Liu ◽  
Jiayun Xu ◽  
Xiumei Li ◽  
Tengfei Yan ◽  
Shuangjiang Yu ◽  
...  

In the past few decades, enormous efforts have been made to synthesize covalent polymer nano/microstructured materials with specific morphologies, due to the relationship between their structures and functions. Up to now, the formation of most of these structures often requires either templates or preorganization in order to construct a specific structure before, and then the subsequent removal of previous templates to form a desired structure, on account of the lack of “self-error-correcting” properties of reversible interactions in polymers. The above processes are time-consuming and tedious. A template-free, self-assembled strategy as a “bottom-up” route to fabricate well-defined nano/microstructures remains a challenge. Herein, we introduce the recent progress in template-free, self-assembled nano/microstructures formed by covalent two-dimensional (2D) polymers, such as polymer capsules, polymer films, polymer tubes and polymer rings.


1987 ◽  
Vol 7 (11) ◽  
pp. 4118-4121
Author(s):  
D A Talmage ◽  
M Blumenfeld

Phosphorylation of histone H1 is developmentally regulated in Drosophila spp. It cannot be detected in preblastoderm embryos or polytene salivary gland cells, but in cellular blastoderm, postblastoderm embryo, and amitotic adult head nuclei, it occurs with a frequency of roughly 4 x 10(5) molecules per nucleus. We used pulse-labeling to study the relationship between H1 synthesis and modification in cultured cells. These results reveal that the H1-associated phosphate is stable and suggest that Drosophila H1 is synthesized, translocated to the nucleus, associated with chromatin, and then phosphorylated. Partial tryptic digestion of Drosophila H1 revealed that the phosphorylation site is located within the globular, central domain of the protein. Thus, the developmentally regulated phosphorylation of Drosophila H1 presents two contrasts with previously studied H1 phosphorylation. It is not correlated with DNA replication, and it is located in the central domain of the protein.


2014 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 584-594 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jiayao Ou ◽  
Yijing He ◽  
Xi Xiao ◽  
Tian-Ming Yu ◽  
Changyan Chen ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (180) ◽  
pp. 20210334
Author(s):  
Liane Gabora ◽  
Mike Steel

Natural selection successfully explains how organisms accumulate adaptive change despite that traits acquired over a lifetime are eliminated at the end of each generation. However, in some domains that exhibit cumulative, adaptive change—e.g. cultural evolution, and earliest life—acquired traits are retained; these domains do not face the problem that Darwin’s theory was designed to solve. Lack of transmission of acquired traits occurs when germ cells are protected from environmental change, due to a self-assembly code used in two distinct ways: (i) actively interpreted during development to generate a soma, and (ii) passively copied without interpretation during reproduction to generate germ cells. Early life and cultural evolution appear not to involve a self-assembly code used in these two ways. We suggest that cumulative, adaptive change in these domains is due to a lower-fidelity evolutionary process, and model it using reflexively autocatalytic and foodset-generated networks. We refer to this more primitive evolutionary process as self–other reorganization (SOR) because it involves internal self-organizing and self-maintaining processes within entities, as well as interaction between entities. SOR encompasses learning but in general operates across groups. We discuss the relationship between SOR and Lamarckism, and illustrate a special case of SOR without variation.


Genetics ◽  
1980 ◽  
Vol 95 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arthur J Hilliker ◽  
Stephen H Clark ◽  
Arthur Chovnick ◽  
William M Gelbart

ABSTRACT This report describes the genetic analysis of a region of the third chromosome of Drosophila melanogaster extending from 87D2-4 to 87E12-F1, an interval of 23 or 24 polytene chromosome bands. This region includes the rosy (ry, 3-52.0) locus, carrying the structural information for xanthine dehydrogenase (XDH). We have, in recent years, focused attention on the genetic regulation of the rosy locus and, therefore, wished to ascertain in detail the immediate genetic environmcnt of this locus. Specifically, we question if rosy is a solitary genetic unit or part of a larger complex genetic unit encompassing adjacent genes. Our data also provide opportunity to examine further the relationship between euchromatic gene distrihution and polytene chromosome structure.—The results of our genetic dissection of the rosy microregion substantiate the conclusion drawn earlier (SCHALET, KERNAGHAN and CHOVNICK 1964) that the rosy locus is the only gene in this region concerned with XDH activity and that all adjacent genetic units are functionally, as well as spatially, distinct Erom the rosy gene. Within the rosy micro-region, we observed a close correspondence between the number of complementation groups (21) and the number of polytene chromosome bands (23 or 24). Consideration of this latter observation in conjunction with those of similar studies of other chhromosomal regions supports the hypothesis that each polytene chromosome band corresponds to a single genetic unit.


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