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Resources » Paper

Powell BS et al. (2000) East Coast Worm Meeting "C. elegans era, homolog of an E. coli cell cycle gene?"

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    Publication type:
    Meeting_abstract
    WormBase ID:
    WBPaper00010595

    Powell BS, Golden A, Court DL, & Ellis HM (2000). C. elegans era, homolog of an E. coli cell cycle gene? presented in East Coast Worm Meeting. Unpublished information; cite only with author permission.

    Members of the GTPase superfamily are found in organisms ranging from bacteria to humans. These proteins function as molecular switches, regulating a variety of cellular processes including signal transduction, cell cycle regulation and protein translocation. The E. coli GTPase, ERA is an essential protein required for normal progression through the cell cycle1. Reduction of era function results in cell cycle arrest after chromosome partitioning, but prior to cytokinesis. Sequence comparisons suggest that ERA and its homologs in other bacteria, C.elegans, mouse and human form a new subfamily of GTPases. These proteins show extensive homology both in the GTPase domain and in a C-terminal RNA binding domain. In searches of the C.elegans database with the conserved carboxy-terminal region of E. coli ERA we identified a single homolog, E02H1.2, which we will refer to as Ce-ERA-1. Ce-ERA-1, is 31% identical (49% similar) to E.coli ERA in the GTPase domain and 19% identical (43% similar) to E.coli ERA in the C-terminal region. RT-PCR experiments generated an SL2 spliced cDNA with an exon structure matching that predicted by the genome project. The first gene in this operon E02H1.1 is homologous to the bacterial rRNA methyltransferase ksgA, which interacts genetically with E. coli era. Thus there might be a functional relationship between the two genes in the C. elegans operon. RNA-mediated interference of E02H1.1 results in a severe developmental delay and larval lethality. The function of Ce-era-1 is unknown. Attempts to disrupt Ce-era-1 function by RNA-mediated interference did not generate any obvious phenotype. A null allele of Ce-era-1 was recently identified in a PCR screen (R. Ranganathan and H.R. Horvitz, personal communication). Characterization of this allele will be presented. 1. Britton, R.A., Powell, B.S., Dasgupta, S., Sun, Q., Margolin, W., Lupski, J.R., and Court, D.L.(1998) Cell cycle arrest in Era GTPase mutants: a potential growth regulated checkpoint in Escherichia coli. Molecular Microbiology 27(4), 739-750.


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