Characterization of an upstream regulatory element of adenovirus L1 poly (A) site

The transition from early to late stage infection by adenovirus involves a change in mRNA expression from the adenovirus major late transcription unit (AdMLTU). This early to late switch centers around alternative selection of one of five poly (A) sites (L1-L5) that code for the major structural proteins of Adenovirus. During the early stage of infection, steady state mRNA is primarily derived from the L1 poly (A) site. During the late stage of infection, each of the MLTU poly (A) sites is represented in the steady state mRNA pool (Falck-Pedersen, E., Logan, J., 1989. Regulation of poly(A) site selection in adenovirus. J. Virol. 63 (2), 532-541.). Using transient transfection of a plasmid expressing Chloramphenicol Acetyl Transferase with a tandem poly (A) minigene system (L13) (DeZazzo, J.D., Falck-Pedersen, E., Imperiale, M.J., 1991. Sequences regulating temporal poly(A) site switching in the adenovirus major late transcription unit. Mol. Cell. Biol. 11 (12), 5977-5984; Prescott, J., Falck-Pedersen, E., 1994. Sequence elements upstream of the 3' cleavage site confer substrate strength to the adenovirus L1 and L3 polyadenylation sites. Mol. Cell. Biol. 14 (7), 4682-4693.), it has been demonstrated that the promoter-proximal L1 poly (A) site which is poorly recognized by the 3' end processing machinery, contains an upstream repressor element (URE) that influences steady state levels of mRNA (Prescott, J.C., Liu, L., Falck-Pedersen, E., 1997. Sequence-mediated regulation of adenovirus gene expression by repression of mRNA accumulation. Mol. Cell. Biol. 17 (4), 2207-2216.). In this study, we have further characterized the elements that mediate L1URE function. These studies indicate that the L1 upstream regulatory element (L1 URE) contains a complex RNA architecture that serves to repress gene expression through multiple sub-effectors. The L1URE functions when located upstream of a heterologous poly (A) site, and is able to strongly suppress steady state mRNA expression from the MLTU L3 poly (A) site or the murine beta-globin poly (A) site. In the tandem L13 mini-gene system, the L1URE is revealed to influence steady state mRNA stability, and subdomains within L1URE influence both gene expression and the steady state ratio of transcripts processed at proximal versus distal poly (A) sites. Transcript and gene repression mediated by the L1URE may provide a general strategy employed by adenovirus to block premature expression of late stage MLTU transcripts.