Discrete high molecular weight RNA transcribed from the long interspersed repetitive element L1Md

The repetitive element LINE (L1) previously has been shown to contain two long open reading frames which are overlapping and out-of-frame similar to those found in retroviruses (1). In rodents and in human 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 mRNA for the open reading frames in rodent cells. In this paper, a discrete RNA species of approximately 8 kb has been identified in most murine lymphoid cells examined. This RNA is cytoplasmic and binds to oligo (dT) cellulose columns. Hybridization with labeled probes indicates that the transcript is of the same strandedness as the open reading frames. These results are consistent with proposals that L1Md is a retroposon with protein-encoding function.