Expression and Suppression of Human Telomerase RNA

  1. S. LI and
  2. E.H. BLACKBURN
  1. Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, University of California, San Fran co, California 94158-2517

Abstract

Telomeres are maintained by the ribonucleoprotein (RNP) enzyme telomerase, which replenishes telomeres through itsunique mechanism of internal RNA-templated addition of telomeric DNA. Telomerase is active in most human cancers, typicallybecause its core protein subunit, TERT, is up-regulated. Although the major known function of telomerase in cancer isto replenish telomeric DNA and maintain cell immortality, the regulation of the RNA component of telomerase is not wellunderstood. In the course of investigations that have implicated telomerase RNA in key aspects of cancer progression, includingmetastasis, we explored some of the cis-acting elements affecting telomerase RNA expression and knockdown. Theexpression efficiency and subsequent RNA processing to produce the mature hTER differed considerably among various promoters.Together with other results, these findings establish that the crucial elements of the hTER gene affecting RNA-processingefficiency to produce the mature hTER RNA are the promoter and internal telomerase RNA-coding sequences.

Footnotes

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