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The novel gene twenty-four defines a critical translational step in the Drosophila clock

Abstract

Daily oscillations of gene expression underlie circadian behaviours in multicellular organisms1. While attention has been focused on transcriptional and post-translational mechanisms1,2,3, other post-transcriptional modes have been less clearly delineated. Here we report mutants of a novel Drosophila gene twenty-four (tyf) that show weak behavioural rhythms. Weak rhythms are accompanied by marked reductions in the levels of the clock protein Period (PER) as well as more modest effects on Timeless (TIM). Nonetheless, PER induction in pacemaker neurons can rescue tyf mutant rhythms. TYF associates with a 5′-cap-binding complex, poly(A)-binding protein (PABP), as well as per and tim transcripts. Furthermore, TYF activates reporter expression when tethered to reporter messenger RNA even in vitro. Taken together, these data indicate that TYF potently activates PER translation in pacemaker neurons to sustain robust rhythms, revealing a new and important role for translational control in the Drosophila circadian clock.

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Figure 1: Robust behavioural rhythms require tyf.
Figure 2: tyf is crucial for PER expression in pacemaker neurons.
Figure 3: PER induction rescues tyf mutant rhythms.
Figure 4: TYF specifically associates with the 5′-cap-binding complex PABP, and target gene transcripts.
Figure 5: TYF activates reporter expression when tethered to its RNA.

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Acknowledgements

We thank I. Edery, J. Hall, H. Keshishian, M. Rosbash, F. Rouyer, A. Sehgal, the Bloomington Drosophila stock center, Harvard Exelixis Drosophila stock collection, KAIST GenExel Drosophila library and the National Institute of Genetics for Drosophila strains; P. Hardin, E. Izaurralde, A. Nakamura, M. Rosbash and N. Sonenberg for antibodies; J. Lykke-Andersen for plasmids; K. E. Duncan for suggestions on in vitro translation assays. This work was supported by grants from the Brain Research Center of the 21st Century Frontier Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, the Republic of Korea (J.C.) and from the National Institutes of Health (R01NS059042, R01NS052903, R01MH067870; R.A.)

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R.A. and J.C. conceived the study; R.A., C.L. and J.C. designed the experiments; C.L. (under the supervision of R.A.) and J.L (under the supervision of J.C.) jointly completed Figs 1 and 2, Supplementary Figs 1, 4, 8, 14 and Supplementary Tables 2 and 3; J.L., S.M.P. and S.K.J. performed and analysed the experiments in Supplementary Fig. 13; J.L., C.C. and J.K. performed the genome-wide behavioural screen; C.C. performed GST pull-down studies in Supplementary Fig. 12a; V.L.K. performed PDF quantification analysis in Supplementary Fig. 5b; C.L. performed and analysed experiments in all remaining Figures, Supplementary Figures and Tables; C.L. and R.A. wrote the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Ravi Allada or Joonho Choe.

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Lim, C., Lee, J., Choi, C. et al. The novel gene twenty-four defines a critical translational step in the Drosophila clock. Nature 470, 399–403 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature09728

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