MTERF

Official Full Name

mitochondrial transcription termination factor 1

Organism

Homo sapiens

GeneID

7978

Background

This gene encodes a mitochondrial transcription termination factor. This protein participates in attenuating transcription from the mitochondrial genome; this attenuation allows higher levels of expression of 16S ribosomal RNA relative to the tRNA gene downstream. The product of this gene has three leucine zipper motifs bracketed by two basic domains that are all required for DNA binding. There is evidence that, for this protein, the zippers participate in intramolecular interactions that establish the three-dimensional structure required for DNA binding. [provided by RefSeq, Jul 2008]

Synonyms

MTERF1; MTERF;

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Detailed Information

Mitochondrial transcription termination factors (also known as mTERF) are widely present in plants and post-lives and are capable of regulating the expression of cytoplasmic genes at different levels. Studies have found that mTERF plays an important role in the regulation of mitochondrial genes and is important for mitochondrial action, biological evolution, genetic diagnosis and treatment.

Figure 1. A structural view of the human mitochondrial transcription cycle. (Hillen, H. S., et al.2017)

The Role of the mTERF Gene

The expression of organelle genes (OGE) plays a key role in plant development, respiration and photosynthesis. But so far, people still do not know its regulation mechanism. OGE requires different nuclear-encoded proteins to facilitate transcription, editing, splicing, splicing, and regulation of translation of various organelle RNAs. In mammals, many MTERFs have a major impact on OGE. Studies have shown that 3/4 of mammalian mTERFs do not actually terminate transcription, but play a role in antisense transcription termination and ribosome synthesis. Other studies have shown that about 30 species of mTERF were produced during the evolution of terrestrial plants, but their role in photosynthetic organisms is still poorly understood.

Mitochondria play a pivotal role in most eukaryotic cells. MTERFs regulate biological activities such as energy metabolism, cell cycle proliferation and apoptosis by regulating the expression of mitochondrial DNA. The human MTERF was studied and found to act on mtDNA in a monomeric form to prematurely terminate the transcription of the H chain. Recent studies have found that mTERF is easier to restart transcription in addition to the above regulation. Drosophila melanogaster DmTTF and sea urchin mtDBP were studied. The results showed that compared with the human mTERF gene, although their binding sites, positions and numbers with mitochondria changed, their role was also to terminate transcription by binding mitochondrial DNA.

Studies have shown that MTERF1 regulates oxidative phosphorylation and cell proliferation in HeLa cells. Another study have found that mouse MTERF1 binds to mtDNA and blocks the transcription of mtDNA light chain to prevent interference with the transcription of the light chain promoter, but this gene does not regulate the transcription of the mtDNA heavy chain. The study found that human mitochondrial MTERF2 is a cell growth inhibitory factor. Wenz studies have shown that in mouse cells, mTERF2 regulates oxidative phosphorylation by regulating mtDNA transcription. Studies have shown that MTERF3 regulates the biosynthesis of mitochondrial ribosomes in invertebrates and mammals. Ye et al. showed that MTERF4 can regulate MPP(+) in mitochondrial dysfunction in SH-SY5Y cells. Moreover, studies have shown that the Mterfd2 gene (also known as MTERF4) exhibits a biallelic expression pattern in the brain, tongue, heart, lung, liver and kidney of a 15.5 d mouse embryo, which may have an significant influence in organ formation and sperm formation during embryonic development.

mTERF and Plants

In plants, MTERFs also have important functions. It was found that the SOLDAT10 gene of Arabidopsis thaliana mutant encodes a mTERF protein, and the mutation of this gene can partially eliminate the damage of singlet oxygen to Arabidopsis and maintain its growth activity. The partial whitening of the leaves caused by the mTERF gene mutation (bsm) in Arabidopsis thaliana was studied. The results showed that the mTERF protein is essential for plasmid gene expression and plant development. Two of the mTERF proteins were genetically mapped and found to be chloroplast genes rather than mitochondrial genes. The mTERF protein encoded by the Arabidopsis RUGOSA2 gene is localized in both mitochondria and chloroplasts. This gene mapping is essential for leaf development studies.

References:

Badisa, R. B. , Darling-Reed, S. F. , & Soliman, K. F. A. . (2010). The protective role ofd-glucose against 1-methyl-4-phenylpyridinium ion (mpp+): induced mitochondrial dysfunction in c6 astroglial cells. Neurochemical Research, 35(9), 1413-1421.
Hillen, H. S. , Morozov, Y. I. , Sarfallah, A. , Temiakov, D. , & Cramer, P. . (2017). Structural basis of mitochondrial transcription initiation. Cell, 171(5), 1072-1081.e10.
Zhao, Y. , Cai, M. , Zhang, X. , Li, Y. , Zhang, J. , & Zhao, H. , et al. (2014). Genome-wide identification, evolution and expression analysis of mterf gene family in maize. PLOS ONE, 9.

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