Abstract
The biocommunicative approach investigates rule-governed, sign-mediated interactions both within and among cells, tissues, organs and organisms. It also investigates genetic sequences as codes/texts that are coherent with the laws of physics and chemistry but, in addition, follow a complementary mix of combinatorial (syntactic), context-sensitive (pragmatic), content-specific (semantic) rules. In this respect, the roles of telomeres and telomerases in evolution, structure and content arrangement of genomes are of particular interest. This involves deciphering the relationships between the ‘molecular syntax’ of telomere repeats and their meaning, i.e. their function in the genomic content. This requires their evolutionary roots to be examined. The telomere replication process by telomerase is the most important feature here because it is processed by a very ancient competence, i.e. reverse transcriptase with a great variety of functions in most key processes of living nature.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsReferences
Ast G (2005) The alternative genome. Sci Am 292:58–65
Bapteste E, Charlebois RL, MacLeod D et al. (2005) The two tempos of nuclear pore complex evolution: highly adapting proteins in an ancient frozen structure. Genome Biol 6:R85
Batzer MA, Deininger DL (2002) ALU repeats and human genomic diversity. Nat Rev Genet 3:370–380
Bird CP, Stranger BE, Dermitzakis ET (2006) Functional variation and evolution of non coding DNA. Curr Opin Genetics Dev 16:559–564
Blasco M (2007) The epigenetic regulation of mammalian telomeres. Nat Rev 8:299–309
Boeke JD (2003) The unusual phylogenetic distribution of retrotransposons: a hypothesis. Genome Res 13:1975–1983
Brosius J (2003) The contribution of RNAs and retroposition to evolutionary novelties. Genetica 118:99–115
Chaconas G (2005) Hairpin telomeres and genome plasticity in Borrelia: all mixed up in the end. Mol Microbiol 58:625–635
Coffin JM, Hughes AH, Varmus HE (1997) Retroviruses. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, New York
Cottingham FR, Hoyt MA (1997) Mitotic spindle positioning in saccharomyces cerevisiae is accomplished by antagonistically acting microtubule motor proteins. J Cell Biol 138:1041–1053
Couzin J (2002) Small RNAs make big splash. Science 298:2296–2297
Curcio MJ, Belfort M (2007) The beginning of the end: links between ancient retroelements and modern telomerases. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 104:9107–9108
Darzacq X, Jady BE, Verheggen C et al. (2002) Cajal body-specific small nuclear RNAs: a novel class of 2’-O-methylation and pseudouridylation guide RNAs. EMBO J 21:2746–2756
Daubin V, Ochman H (2004) Start-up entities in the origin of new genes. Curr Opin Genetics Dev 14:616–619
Doench JG, Petersen CP, Sharp PA (2003) siRNAs can function as miRNAs. Genes Dev 17:438–442
Du S, Traktman P (1996) Vaccinia virus DNA replication: two hundred base pairs of telomeric sequence confer optimal replication efficiency on minichromosome templates. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 93:9693–9698
Eickbush TH (1997) Telomerase and retrotransposons: which came first? Science 277:911–912
Eickbush T (1999). Mobile introns: retrohoming by complete reverse splicing. Curr Biol 9:11–14
Eickbush TH, Eickbush DG (2007) Finely orchestrated movements: evolution of the ribosomal RNA genes. Genetics 175:477–485
Fajkus J, Sykorova E, Leitch AR (2005) Telomeres in evolution and evolution of telomeres. Chromosome Res 13:469–479
Filipowicz W (2000) Imprinted expression of small nucleolar RNAs in brain: time for RNomics. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 97:14035–14037
Fire A (2005) Nucleic acid structure and intracellular immunity: some recent ideas from the world of RNAi. Q Rev Biophys 38:303–309
Fire A, Xu S, Montgomery MK et al. (1998) Potent and specific genetic interference by double-stranded RNA in Caenorhabditis elegans. Nature 391:806–811
Flavell AJ (1995) Retroelements, reverse transcriptase and evolution. Comp Biochem Physiol B 110:3–15
Frost LS, Laplae R, Summers AO et al. (2005) Mobile genetic elements: the agents of open source evolution. Nat Rev Microbiol 3:722–732
Grewal SIS, Elgin SCR (2007) Transcription and RNA interference in the formation of heterochromatin. Nature 447:399–406
Haoudi A, Mason JM (2000) Reverse transcriptase can stabilize or destabilize the genome. Genome 43:949–956
Ijdo JW, Baldini A, Ward DC et al. (1991) Origin of human chromosome 2: an ancestral telomere-telomere fusion. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 88:9051–9055
Jady BE, Bertrand E, Kiss T (2004) Human telomerase RNA and box H/ACA scaRNAs share a common Cajal body-specific localization signal. J Cell Biol 164:647–652
Kiss AM, Jady BE, Darzaq X et al. (2001) A Cajal body specific pseudouridylation guide RNA is composed of two box H/ACA snoRNA-like domains. Nucleic Acids Res 30:4643–4649
Koonin EV (2006) Temporal order of evolution of DNA replication system inferred by comparison of cellular and viral DNA polymerases. Biology Direct doi:10.1186/1745-6150-1–39
Koonin EV, Senkevich TG, Dolja VV (2006) The ancient Virus World and evolution of cells. Biol Direct 1:29
Laun P, Bruschi CV, Dickinson JR et al. (2007) Yeast mother cell-specific ageing, genetic (in)stability, and the somatic mutation theory of ageing. Nucleic Acids Res doi:10.1093/nar/gkm919, 1–14.
Leipe DD, Aravind L, Koonin EV (1999) Did DNA replication evolve twice independently? Nucleic Acids Res 27:3389–3401
Maita N, Anzai T, Aoyagi H et al. (2004) Crystal structure of the endonuclease domain encoded by the telomere-specific long interspersed nuclear element, TRAS1. J Biol Chem 279:41067–41076
Maizels A, Weiner AM (1999) The genomic tag hypothesis: modern viruses as molecular fossils of ancient strategies for genomic replication. Biol Bull 196:327–330
Maizels N, Weiner AM, Yue D et al. (1999) New evidence for the genomic tag hypothesis: archaeal CCA-adding enzymes and tRNA substrates. Biol Bull 196:331–334
Matera AG (2006) Drosophila Cajal bodies: accessories not included. J Cell Biol 172:791–793
Matera AG, Terns RM, Terns MP (2007) Non-coding RNAs: lessons from the small nuclear and small nucleolar RNAs. Nat Rev Mol Cell Biol 8:209–220
Mattick JS (2001) Non-coding RNAs: the architects of eukaryotic complexity. EMBO Rep 2:986–991
Mattick JS (2006) The underworld of RNA. Nat Genet 38:393
Mattick JS (2007) A new paradigm for developmental biology. J Exp Biol 210:1526–1547
Mesnard JM, Lebeurier G (1991) How do viral reverse transcriptases recognize their RNA genome? FEBS Lett 287:1–4
Nakamura TM, Cech TR (1998) Reversing time: origin of telomerase. Cell 92:587–590
Nosek J, Kosa P, Tomaska L (2006) On the origin of telomeres: a glimpse at the pre-telomerase world. Bioessays 28:182–190
Obbard DJ, Gordon KHJ, Buck AH et al. (2009) The evolution of ENAi as a defence against viruses and transposable elements. Phil Trans R Soc B 364:99–115
Platani M, Goldberg I, Lamond AI et al. (2002) Cajal body dynamics and association with chromatin are ATP dependent. Nat Cell Biol 4:502–508
Rashkova S, Karam SE, Kellum R et al. (2002) Gag proteins of the two drosophila telomeric retrotransposons are targeted to chromosome ends. J Cell Biol 159:397–402
Rogozin IB, Sverdlov AV, Babenko VN et al. (2005) Analysis of evolution of exon-intron structure of eukaryotic genes. Brief Bioinform 6:118–134
Ryan FP (2006) Genomic creativity and natural selection: a modern synthesis. Biol J Linn Soc 88:655–672
Savitsky M, Kwon D, Georgiev P, Kalmykova A, Gvozdev V (2006) Telomere elongation is under the control of the RNAi-based mechanism in the Drosophila germline. Genes Dev 20:345–354
Shabalina SA, Spiridonov NA (2004) The mammalian transcriptome and the function of non-coding DNA sequences. Genome Biol 5:105e
Shapiro JA (2002) Genome organization and reorganization in evolution. In: Van Speybroeck L, Van de Vijver G, Waele DD (eds) From Epigenesis to Epigenetics. The genome in context. Ann NY Acad Sci 981:111–134
Shapiro JA (2006) Genome informatics: the role of DNA in cellular computations. Biol Theor 1:288–301
Shapiro JA, Sternberg R (2005) Why repetitive DNA is essential to genome function. Biol Rev 80:1–24
Slotkin RK, Martienssen R (2007). Transposable elements and the epigenetic regulation of the genome. Nat Rev Genet 8:272–285
Sternberg R (2002) On the roles of repetitive DNA elements in the context of a unified genomic-epigenetic system. In: Van Speybroeck L, Van de Vijver G, Waele DD (eds) From Epigenesis to Epigenetics. The genome in context. Ann NY Acad Sci 981:154–188
Sternberg R, Shapiro JA (2005) How repeated retroelements format genome function. Cytogenet Genome Res 110:108–116
Sugiyama T, Cam H, Verdel A et al. (2005) RNA-dependent RNA polymerase is an essential component of a self-inforcing loop coupling heterochromatin assembly to siRNA production. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 102:151–157
Tomlinson RL, Ziegler TD, Supakorndej T et al. (2006) Cell cycle-regulated trafficking of human telomerase to telomeres. Mol Biol Cell 17:955–965
Tourand Y, Bankhead T, Wilson SL et al. (2006) Differential telomere processing by borrelia telomere resolvases in vitro but not in vivo. J Bacteriol 188:7378–7386
Vale R (2003) The molecular motor toolbox for intracellular transport. Cell 112:467–480
Vaughn MW, Martienssen R (2005) It’s a small RNA world, after all. Science 309:1525–1526
Vetsigian K, Woese C, Goldenfeld N (2006) Collective evolution and the genetic code. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 103:10696–10701
Villarreal LP (2005) Viruses and the Evolution of Life. ASM Press, Washington
Villarreal LP (2009) Origin of Group Identity: Viruses, Addiction and Cooperation. Springer, New York
Villasante A, Abad JP, Mendez-Lago M (2007) Centromeres were derived from telomeres during the evolution of the eukaryotic chromosome. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 104:10542–10547
Volff JN (2006) Turning junk into gold: domestication of transposable elements and the creation of new genes in eukaryotes. Bioessays 28:913–922
Weber MJ (2006) Mammalian small nucleolar RNAs are mobile genetic elements. PLoS Genetics doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.0020205
Witzany G (2006) Natural genome-editing competences of viruses. Acta Biotheor 54:235–253
Xiong Y, Eickbush TH (1990) Origin and evolution of retroelements based upon their reverse transcriptase sequences. EMBO J 9:3353–3362
Yang J, Malik HS, Eickbush TH (1999) Identification of the endonuclease domain encoded by R2 and other site-specific, non-long terminal repeat retrotransposable elements. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 96:7847–7852
Zemann A, Beckke A, Kiefmann M et al. (2006) Evolution of small nucleolar RNAs in nematodes. Nucleic Acids Res 34:2676–2685
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2010 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Witzany, G. (2010). Viral Origins of Telomeres and Telomerases. In: Biocommunication and Natural Genome Editing. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3319-2_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3319-2_9
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-481-3318-5
Online ISBN: 978-90-481-3319-2
eBook Packages: Biomedical and Life SciencesBiomedical and Life Sciences (R0)