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Does the villainous 'selfish' gene undermine genome's police?
Date:3/5/2013

genes want to hog all the resources, hog all the benefit."

The SD backstory

What makes the "a" allele susceptible to SD's subterfuge is the number of copies it harbors of a runaway snippet of genetic code called Responder. A few copies of Responder are no problem, but hundreds of copies make "a" susceptible. Some alleles have thousands of copies and only one in a thousand survives.

Genomes try to root out parasites like Responder by creating and dispatching proteins into the nucleus and the cytoplasm. These police proteins are armed with "police sketches" of the parasites in the form of small RNA transcripts.

The new plot twist

It struck Reenan and lead author Selena Gell that this policing system because it targets self-copiers like Responder might somehow have a role in the SD saga. They decided to find out by purposely perturbing the system.

In the experiments described in Genetics, Reenan and Gell show that engineered mutations in the police gene named Aubergine (others on the force in the experiments are called Piwi, Squash, and Zucchini) amplify SD chromosomes' success in eliminating Responder-laden sperm, compared to that of SD chromosomes without Aubergine's help. The results show that this police system suppresses Responder, and therefore SD. It also means that if SD somehow can upset the policing system, it can have a field day.

"We're the first to have experimentally shown that mutations in the system can modify the degree of distortion," Reenan said. "We used homologous recombination to knock in a mutation specifically on the SD chromosome to compromise Aubergine, and that's exactly what we saw: the chromosome became more selfish."

Reenan and Gell did not go so far as to determine whether known SD-promoting genes called Enhancer of SD, Stabilizer of SD, and Modifier of SD act by interfering with Aubergine or its buddies on the force, but Reenan said that is am
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Contact: David Orenstein
david_orenstein@brown.edu
401-863-1862
Brown University
Source:Eurekalert  

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