[Efficient cap-dependent in vitro and in vivo translation of mammalian mRNAs with long and highly structured 5'-untranslated regions].

According to generally accepted scanning model proposed by M. Kozak, the secondary structure of 5'-untranslated regions (5'-UTR) of eukaryotic mRNAs can only cause an inhibitory effect on the translation initiation since it would counteract migration of the 40S ribosomal subunit along the mRNA polynucleotide chain. Thus, the existence of efficiently translatable mRNAs with long and highly structured 5'-UTRs is not compatible with the cap-dependent scanning mechanism. It is expected that such mRNAs should use alternative ways of translation initiation to be efficiently translated, first of all the mechanism of the internal ribosome entry mediated by special RNA structures called IRESes (for Internal Ribosome Entry Sites), which have been proposed to reside within their 5'-UTRs. In this paper, it is shown that this point of view is not correct and most probably based on experiments of mRNA translation in rabbit reticulocyte lysate. This cell free system does not reflect correctly the ratio of translation efficiencies of various mRNAs which is observed in the living cell. Using five different mRNAs of similar design which possess either relatively short leaders of cellular mRNAs (beta-globin and beta-actin mRNAs) or long and highly structured 5'-UTRs (c-myc, LINE-1, Apaf-1 mRNAs), we show that the translation activities of all tested 5'-UTRs are comparable, both in transfected cells and in a whole cytoplasmic extract of cultivated cells. This activity is strongly dependent on the presence of the cap at their 5'-ends.

[A key role of the internal region of the 5'-untranslated region in the human L1 retrotransposon transcription activity].

The long 5-untranslated region (5'-UTR) of the human retrotransposon L1 harbors a unique internal promoter which ensures new copies of this mobile element to be much less dependent on an integration site at the level of transcription. The mechanism of this promoter's action still remains unclear, but due to some early studies the opinion has been -formed that the most important part for its function ("minimal promoter") is the first 100-150 nts of the 5'-UTR. In this paper we show that activity of the "minimal promoter" is rather poor in comparison with the entire 5'-UTR. The absolutely crucial part which is indispensable for the effective transcription is the internal region of the 5'-UTR (+390...+662) containing multiple binding sites for various transcription factors. This region may be considered as a transcriptional enhancer. Deletion of this segment leads to a dramatic lost of transcription level irrespectively of cell type, while deletion of the first 100 nt decreases the transcription efficiency no more than 1.5 to 2-fold. Thus, the organization of the L1 regulatory region may be much more similar to that of well-studied invertebrate LINE elements than it was thought before. Also we suggest a possible existence of an alternative sense promoter within the internal part of the L1 5'-UTR driving the synthesis of a 5'-truncated mRNA of the retrotransposon.