The identification of putative RNA polymerase II C-terminal domain associated proteins in red and green algae

A tandemly repeated C-terminal domain (CTD) of the largest subunit of RNA polymerase II is functionally essential and strongly conserved in many organisms, including animal, yeast and plant models. Although present in simple, ancestral red algae, CTD tandem repeats have undergone extensive modifications and degeneration during the evolutionary transition to developmentally complex rhodophytes. In contrast, CTD repeats are conserved in both green algae and their more complex land plant relatives. Understanding the mechanistic differences that underlie these variant patterns of CTD evolution requires knowledge of CTD-associated proteins in these 2 lineages. To provide an initial baseline comparison, we bound potential phospho-CTD associated proteins (PCAPs) to artificially synthesized and phosphorylated CTD repeats from the unicellular red alga Cyanidioschyzon merolae and green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. Our results indicate that red and green algae share a number of PCAPs, including kinases and proteins involved in mRNA export. There also are important taxon-specific differences, including mRNA splicing-related PCAPs recovered from Chlamydomonas but not Cyanidioschyzon, consistent with the relative intron densities in green and red algae. Our results also offer the first experimental indication that different proteins bind 2 distinct types of repeats in Cyanidioschyzon, suggesting a division of function between the proximal and distal CTD, similar to patterns identified in more developmentally complex model organisms.