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Updated: Sep 29, 2026

Horizontal Gel Electrophoresis for Enhanced Detection of Protein-RNA Complexes
Published on: July 28, 2017
Bicoid associates with the 5'-cap-bound complex of caudal mRNA and represses translation
Dierk Niessing1, Stephen Blanke, Herbert Jäckle
1Max-Planck-Institut für biophysikalische Chemie, Abteilung Molekulare Entwicklungsbiologie, 37077 Göttingen, Germany.
Abstract:
Translational control plays a key role in many biological processes including pattern formation during early Drosophila embryogenesis. In this process, the anterior determinant Bicoid (BCD) acts not only as a transcriptional activator of segmentation genes but also causes specific translational repression of ubiquitously distributed caudal (cad) mRNA in the anterior region of the embryo. We show that translational repression of cad mRNA is dependent on a functional eIF4E-binding motif. The results suggest a novel mode of translational repression, which combines the strategy of target-specific binding to 3'-untranslated sequences and interference with 5'-cap-dependent translation initiation in one protein.
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