Discrete high molecular weight RNA transcribed from the long interspersed repetitive element LIMd

Abstract

The repetitive element LINE (LI) previously has been shown to contain two long open reading fraaes which are overlapping and out-of-frame similar to those found in retroviruses (1). In rodents and in huaan cells, these repeats appear to be transcribed into a heterogeneous population of RNAs in most cell types (2.3,4). No discrete transcript has been reported which is likely to be a bRNA for the open reading franes in rodent cells. In this paper, a discrete RNA species of approximately 8 kb has been identified In aost aurlne lvaphold cells examined. This RNA is cytoplasaic and binds to oligo (dT) cellulose columns. Hybridization with labeled probes Indicates that the transcript is of the same strandedness as the open reading fraaes. These results are consistent with proposals that LIMd is a retroposon with protein-encoding function