The ciliate Tetrahymena thermophila is a model organism for molecular and cellular biology. Like other ciliates, this species has separate germline and soma functions that are embodied by distinct nuclei within a single cell. The germline-like micronucleus (MIC) has its genome held in reserve for sexual reproduction. The soma-like macronucleus (MAC), which possesses a genome processed from that of the MIC, is the center of gene expression and does not directly contribute DNA to sexual progeny. We report here the shotgun sequencing, assembly, and analysis of the MAC genome of T. thermophila, which is approximately 104 Mb in length and composed of approximately 225 chromosomes. Overall, the gene set is robust, with more than 27,000 predicted protein-coding genes, 15,000 of which have strong matches to genes in other organisms. The functional diversity encoded by these genes is substantial and reflects the complexity of processes required for a free-living, predatory, single-celled organism. This is highlighted by the abundance of lineage-specific duplications of genes with predicted roles in sensing and responding to environmental conditions (e.g., kinases), using diverse resources (e.g., proteases and transporters), and generating structural complexity (e.g., kinesins and dyneins). In contrast to the other lineages of alveolates (apicomplexans and dinoflagellates), no compelling evidence could be found for plastid-derived genes in the genome. UGA, the only T. thermophila stop codon, is used in some genes to encode selenocysteine, thus making this organism the first known with the potential to translate all 64 codons in nuclear genes into amino acids. We present genomic evidence supporting the hypothesis that the excision of DNA from the MIC to generate the MAC specifically targets foreign DNA as a form of genome self-defense. The combination of the genome sequence, the functional diversity encoded therein, and the presence of some pathways missing from other model organisms makes T. thermophila an ideal model for functional genomic studies to address biological, biomedical, and biotechnological questions of fundamental importance.

Amino acid deprivation triggers dramatic physiological responses in all organisms, altering both the synthesis and destruction of RNA and protein. Here we describe, using the ciliate Tetrahymena thermophila, a previously unidentified response to amino acid deprivation in which mature transfer RNA (tRNA) is cleaved in the anticodon loop. We observed that anticodon loop cleavage affects a small fraction of most or all tRNA sequences. Accumulation of cleaved tRNA is temporally coordinated with the morphological and metabolic changes of adaptation to starvation. The starvation-induced endonucleolytic cleavage activity targets tRNAs that have undergone maturation by 5 and 3 end processing and base modification. Curiously, the majority of cleaved tRNAs lack the 3 terminal CCA nucleotides required for aminoacylation. Starvation-induced tRNA cleavage is inhibited in the presence of essential amino acids, independent of the persistence of other starvation-induced responses. Our findings suggest that anticodon loop cleavage may reduce the accumulation of uncharged tRNAs as part of a specific response induced by amino acid starvation.

PAZ/PIWI domain (PPD) proteins carrying small RNAs (sRNAs) function in gene and genome regulation. The ciliate Tetrahymena thermophila encodes numerous PPD proteins exclusively of the Piwi clade. We show that the three Tetrahymena Piwi family proteins (Twis) preferentially expressed in growing cells differ in their genetic essentiality and subcellular localization. Affinity purification of all eight distinct Twi proteins revealed unique properties of their bound sRNAs. Deep sequencing of Twi-bound and total sRNAs in strains disrupted for various silencing machinery uncovered an unanticipated diversity of 23-to 24-nt sRNA classes in growing cells, each with distinct genetic requirements for accumulation. Altogether, Twis distinguish sRNAs derived from loci of pseudogene families, three types of DNA repeats, structured RNAs, and EST-supported loci with convergent or paralogous transcripts. Most surprisingly, Twi7 binds complementary strands of unequal length, while Twi10 binds a specific permutation of the guanosine-rich telomeric repeat. These studies greatly expand the structural and functional repertoire of endogenous sRNAs and RNPs.[Keywords: Argonaute; Dicer; RNA silencing; RNA-dependent RNA polymerase; endogenous small RNA] Supplemental material is available at http://www.genesdev.org.

SUMMARY RNA quality control pathways get rid of faulty RNAs and therefore must be able to discriminate these RNAs from those that are normal. Here we present evidence that the ATPase cycle of the SF1 Helicase Upf1 is required for mRNA discrimination during Nonsense-Mediated Decay (NMD). Mutations affecting the Upf1 ATPase cycle disrupt the mRNA selectivity of Upf1, leading to indiscriminate accumulation of NMD complexes on both NMD target and non-target mRNAs. In addition, two modulators of NMD -translation and termination codon-proximal poly(A) binding protein - depend on the ATPase activity of Upf1 to limit Upf1-non-target association. Preferential ATPase-dependent dissociation of Upf1 from non-target mRNAs in vitro suggests that selective release of Upf1 contributes to the ATPase-dependence of Upf1 target discrimination. Given the prevalence of helicases in RNA regulation, ATP hydrolysis may be a widely employed activity in target RNA discrimination.

Deregulated expression of one or more growth control genes including p16, p53, EGF receptor (EGFR), MDM2 or Bcl-2 may contribute to the treatment resistance phenotype of GBM and generally poor patient survival. Clinically, GBM have been divided into two major groups defined by (1) histologic progression from a low grade tumor ("progressive" or "secondary" GBM) contrasted with (2) those which show initial clinical presentation without a prior history ("de novo" or "primary" GBM). Using molecular genetic analysis for p53 gene mutations together with immunophenotyping for overexpression of EGFR, up to four GBM variants can be distinguished, including the p53+/EGFR- progressive or the p53-/EGFR+ de novo variant. We examined the survival of 80 adult patients diagnosed with astrocytic GBM stratified by age category (>40, 41-60 or 61-80) to determine whether alterations in any one given growth control gene or whether different genetic variants of GBM (progressive versus de novo) were associated with different survival outcomes. Survival testing using Kaplan-Meier plots for GBM patients with or without altered expression of p16, p53, EGFR, MDM2 or Bcl-2 showed no significant differences by age group or by gene expression indicating a lack of prognostic value for GBM. Also the clinical outcome among patients with GBM showed no significant differences within each age category for any GBM variant including the progressive and de novo GBM variants indicating similar biologic behavior despite different genotypes. Using a pairwise comparison, one-third of the GBM with normal p16 expression showed accumulation of MDM2 protein and this association approached statistical significance (0.01 < P < 0.05) using the Bonferroni procedure. These GBM may represent a variant in which the p19ARF/MDM2/p53 pathway may be deregulated rather than the p16/cyclin D-CDK4/Rb pathway.

Endogenous small RNAs function in RNA interference (RNAi) pathways to guide RNA cleavage, translational repression, or methylation of DNA or chromatin. In Tetrahymena thermophila, developmentally regulated DNA elimination is governed by an RNAi mechanism involving ∼27-30-nucleotide (nt) RNAs. Here we characterize the sequence features of the ∼27-30-nt RNAs and a ∼23-24-nt RNA class representing a second RNAi pathway. The ∼23-24-nt RNAs accumulate strain-specifically manner and map to the genome in clusters that are antisense to predicted genes. These findings reveal the existence of distinct endogenous RNAi pathways in the unicellular T. thermophila, a complexity previously demonstrated only in multicellular organisms. In diverse eukaryotes from parasitic protozoa to humans, RNA interference (RNAi) pathways regulate gene expression, establish heterochromatin, and/or protect the genome from viruses and mobile DNA elements (Matzke and Birchler 2005;Sontheimer and Carthew 2005). Although the biological function of RNAi varies, central to all pathways are ∼21-30-nucleotide (nt) small noncoding RNAs (sRNAs) that provide specificity for RNA or DNA targets. In multicellular organisms, three major classes of endogenous sRNAs have been characterized in detail: micro RNAs (miRNAs), repeat-associated small interfering RNAs (rasiRNAs), and trans-acting small interfering RNAs (ta-siRNAs) (Bartel 2005;Sontheimer and Carthew 2005). The miRNAs and tasiRNAs direct translational repression and/or degradation of messenger RNAs. The rasiRNAs, derived from repetitive DNA elements such as transposons and centromeres, function to promote heterochromatin formation, DNA methylation, and/or RNA degradation. Lesswell-characterized sRNAs include those with precise complementarity to protein-coding genes, pseudogenes, and intergenic regions (e.g., see Ambros et al. 2003).The biogenesis of diverse sRNAs depends on an RNaseIII family nuclease called Dicer (Tomari and Zamore 2005). The Dicer substrates for miRNA production are single-stranded RNAs with stem-loop structures, while precursors to ta-siRNAs and most rasiRNAs are double-stranded RNAs (dsRNAs) resulting from bidirectional transcription or RNA-dependent RNA polymerase activity. Dicer processing of precursors yields short sRNA duplexes of homogeneous length. One strand of each sRNA duplex is stabilized by assembly into an effector ribonucleoprotein (RNP) containing a Piwi/PAZ domain (PPD) protein of the Argonaute family. Multicellular eukaryotes express multiple paralogs of RNAi pathway components that are specialized in function.In contrast to the diversity of sRNAs in multicellular organisms, unicellular eukaryotes are only known to express rasiRNA-like sRNAs (Djikeng et al. 2001;Reinhart and Bartel 2002;Chicas et al. 2004;Ullu et al. 2005). In the free-living ciliated protozoan Tetrahymena thermophila, RNAs ∼26-31 nt in length direct developmentally programmed DNA elimination (Mochizuki and Gorovsky 2004b). T. thermophila, like other ciliates, has nuclear dualism, with a diploid, g...

Many classes of small RNA (sRNA) involved in RNA silencing are generated by double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) processing. Although principles of sRNA biogenesis have emerged, newly identified classes of sRNAs have features that suggest additional biogenesis mechanisms. Tetrahymena thermophila expresses one such class, comprising sRNAs of 23 and 24 nucleotides (nt) with an absolute strand bias in accumulation. Here we demonstrate sRNA production by the T. thermophila Dicer Dcr2 and the RNA-dependent RNA polymerase Rdr1, which purifies as a multisubunit RNA-dependent RNA polymerase complex (RDRC). Dcr2 and RDRC interact, stimulating Dcr2 activity. Moreover, Dcr2 specificity is influenced by RDRC beyond this physical interaction, as Dcr2 generates discrete 23- and 24-nt sRNAs only from dsRNA with a 5'-triphosphate. These findings suggest that sRNA strand bias arises from Dcr2 processing polarity, conferred by physical and functional coupling of RDRC and Dicer enzymes.

Background: Tetrahymena thermophila, a widely studied model for cellular and molecular biology, is a binucleated single-celled organism with a germline micronucleus (MIC) and somatic macronucleus (MAC). The recent draft MAC genome assembly revealed low sequence repetitiveness, a result of the epigenetic removal of invasive DNA elements found only in the MIC genome. Such low repetitiveness makes complete closure of the MAC genome a feasible goal, which to achieve would require standard closure methods as well as removal of minor MIC contamination of the MAC genome assembly. Highly accurate preliminary annotation of Tetrahymena's coding potential was hindered by the lack of both comparative genomic sequence information from close relatives and significant amounts of cDNA evidence, thus limiting the value of the genomic information and also leaving unanswered certain questions, such as the frequency of alternative splicing.