Abstract
Our studies show that the making of fibroin by mechanically stimulated spider glands seems to require a series of well-orchestrated gene expressions. Monitoring of the process through time sequence has revealed four transient waves of molecular syntheses. The last and most dramatic of these events is the synthesis of the full-size fibroin product, which is preceded by a wave which generates template RNA by a 60-min interval. The other two events generate small RNAs. Analyses of the first of the small RNA-generating bouts, consistently of higher magnitude than the subsequent one, displays upgrading of 5S RNA, to a higher extent of Ul snRNA, and a dramatic boost in alanine transfer RNA (tRNA) accumulation. This tRNA resolves into two isoforms, one of which is gland-specific and quantitatively correlated to its fibroin-synthesizing activity. The second of these waves serves to optimize the gland’s translational milieu through the differential expression of the tRNAs cognate to the most preponderant amino acids of the gland’s fibroin product in a similar proportion to that in which these appear in the fibroin. Worthy of note is the disproportionate accumulation of alanine-tRNA which is produced primarily within the first wave of small RNA syntheses and which selectively enriches the system with a tissue-specific isoacceptor species in a proportion of 4:1 to its constitutive counterpart. The nucleotide sequence of this isoform endows it with structural features which foster its possible performance in other than elongation functions during the synthesis of fibroin.
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Candelas, G.C., Arroyo, G., Carrasco, C., Carrasquillo, E., Plazaola, A., Irizarry, M. (1993). Concerted Gene Expressions in Elicited Fibroin Synthesis. In: Ilan, J. (eds) Translational Regulation of Gene Expression 2. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-2894-4_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-2894-4_12
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