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. 1990 Nov;10(11):6059–6063. doi: 10.1128/mcb.10.11.6059

Splicing precedes polyadenylation during Drosophila E74A transcription.

M F LeMaire 1, C S Thummel 1
PMCID: PMC361406  PMID: 1978245

Abstract

The E74 gene is one of a small set of early genes induced by the steroid hormone ecdysone at the onset of metamorphosis in the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster. This complex gene directs the synthesis of a 60-kilobase (kb) primary transcript that is spliced to form the 6-kb E74A mRNA. In a previous study, we found that ecdysone directly activates the E74A promoter and determined that RNA polymerase II transcribes this gene at a rate of approximately 1.1 kb/min. This elongation rate accounts for most of the 1-hour delay seen between the addition of ecdysone and the appearance of cytoplasmic E74A mRNA (C. S. Thummel, K. C. Burtis, and D. S. Hogness, Cell 61:101-111, 1990). We show here that nascent E74A transcripts are spliced, and we propose a model for the order of that splicing. This study provides, for the first time, direct biochemical evidence for splicing of a low-abundance cellular RNA before transcription termination and polyadenylation.

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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