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In Escherichia coli, cytosine DNA methylation is catalyzed by the Dcm (DNA cytosine methyltransferase) protein and occurs at the second cytosine in the sequence 5′CCWGG3′. Although the presence of cytosine DNA methylation was reported over 35 years ago, the biological role of 5-methylcytosine in E. coli remains unclear. In order to gain insight into the role of cytosine DNA methylation in E. coli, we: (a) screened the 72 strains of the ECOR collection and 90 recently isolated environmental samples for the presence of the full-length dcm gene using the polymerase chain reaction; (b) examined the same strains for the presence of 5-methylcytosine at 5′CCWGG3′ sites using a restriction enzyme isoschizomer digestion assay; and (c) quantified the levels of 5-methyl-2′-deoxycytidine in selected strains using liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry. Dcm-mediated cytosine DNA methylation is conserved in all 162 strains examined, and the level of 5-methylcytosine ranges from 0.86% to 1.30% of the cytosines. We also demonstrate that Dcm reduces expression of ribosomal protein genes during stationary phase, and this may explain the highly conserved nature of this DNA modification pathway.

The relationships among gene regulatory mechanisms in the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum throughout its asexual intraerythrocytic developmental cycle (IDC) remain poorly understood. To investigate the level and nature of transcriptional activity and its role in controlling gene expression during the IDC, we performed nuclear run-on on whole-transcriptome samples from time points throughout the IDC and found a peak in RNA polymerase II-dependent transcriptional activity related to both the number of nuclei per parasite and variable transcriptional activity per nucleus over time. These differential total transcriptional activity levels allowed the calculation of the absolute transcriptional activities of individual genes from gene-specific nuclear run-on hybridization data. For half of the genes analyzed, sense-strand transcriptional activity peaked at the same time point as total activity. The antisense strands of several genes were substantially transcribed. Comparison of the transcriptional activity of the sense strand of each gene to its steady-state RNA abundance across the time points assayed revealed both correlations and discrepancies, implying transcriptional and posttranscriptional regulation, respectively. Our results demonstrate that such comparisons can effectively indicate gene regulatory mechanisms in P. falciparum and suggest that genes with diverse transcriptional activity levels and patterns combine to produce total transcriptional activity levels tied to parasite development during the IDC.Plasmodium falciparum, the most deadly human malaria parasite, undergoes many developmental changes and thrives in both human and mosquito hosts. Since the genome sequence of P. falciparum became available (17), microarray studies of its intraerythrocytic developmental cycle (IDC) (3, 37) and other asexual and bloodborne stages (34) have demonstrated that differential gene expression is integral to the parasite's development. The stage specificity of steady-state RNA expression supports previous observations that the morphological changes of the IDC correspond to many less-apparent changes in physiology, such as protein and nucleic acid metabolism (10, 19) and sensitivity to small molecules (14, 22, 61). The Plasmodium repertoire of gene regulatory mechanisms is comparable to those of other eukaryotes (7, 23), implying that stage-specific gene expression may be regulated at many levels, including chromatin structure, transcriptional activation, and posttranscriptional modulation of translation and stability (11,39,41,59). However, the relationship between such mechanisms during the IDC, specifically whether regulation of primary transcriptional activity determines the steadystate RNA level, remains uncertain for the vast majority of genes.P. falciparum's steady-state expression patterns during the IDC have been hypothesized to result from cis-acting regulatory DNA sequences (e.g., promoters and enhancers), given its canonical basal transcriptional machinery (4,5,55). Numerous studies of individual puta...

Polyadenylation of RNAs plays a critical role in modulating rates of RNA turnover and ultimately in controlling gene expression in all systems examined to date. In mitochondria, the precise mechanisms by which RNAs are degraded, including the role of polyadenylation, are not well understood. Our previous in organello pulsechase experiments suggest that poly(A) tails stimulate degradation of mRNAs in the mitochondria of the protozoan parasite Trypanosoma brucei (Militello, K. T., and Read, L. K. (2000) Mol. Cell. Biol. 21, 731-742). In this report, we developed an in vitro assay to directly examine the effects of specific 3-sequences on RNA degradation. We found that a salt-extracted mitochondrial membrane fraction preferentially degraded polyadenylated mitochondrially and non-mitochondrially encoded RNAs over their non-adenylated counterparts. A poly(A) tail as short as 5 nucleotides was sufficient to stimulate rapid degradation, although an in vivo tail length of 20 adenosines supported the most rapid decay. A poly(U) extension did not promote rapid RNA degradation, and RNA turnover was slowed by the addition of uridine residues to the poly(A) tail. To stimulate degradation, the poly(A) element must be located at the 3 terminus of the RNA. Finally, we demonstrate that degradation of polyadenylated RNAs occurs in the 3 to 5 direction through the action of a hydrolytic exonuclease. These experiments demonstrate that the poly(A) tail can act as a cis-acting element to facilitate degradation of T. brucei mitochondrial mRNAs.