Friend murine leukemia virus (MLV) belongs to the gamma retroviruses of the Retroviridae family. The positive-sense RNA of its genome contains a 5' long terminal repeat (LTR), 5' leader sequence, gag, pol, env, and 3' LTR. Transcription from proviral DNA begins from the R region of the 5' LTR and ends at the polyadenylation signal located at the R region of the other end of the 3' LTR. There is a 5' splice site in the 5' leader sequence and a 3' splice site at the 3' end of the pol region. Both full-length unspliced mRNAs and a singly spliced mRNA (env-mRNA) are produced in MLV-infected cells. The MLV Env protein plays important roles both in viral adsorption to host cells and in neuropathogenic disease in MLV-infected mice and rats. Understanding the regulatory mechanisms controlling Env expression is important for determining the functions of the Env protein. We have previously shown that splicing increases env-mRNA stability and translation efficiency. Generally, mRNA polysome formation correlates with translation efficiency. Therefore, here we investigated the effects of env-mRNA splicing on polysome formation to identify mechanisms for Env up-regulation due to splicing. We performed polysome profile analyses using Env-expression plasmids producing spliced or unspliced env-mRNA and showed that the former formed polysomes more efficiently than the latter. Thus, splicing of env-mRNA facilitated polysome formation, suggesting that this contributes to up-regulation of Env expression. We replaced the env region of the expression plasmids with a luciferase (luc) gene, and found that in this case both unspliced and spliced luc-mRNA formed polysomes to a similar extent. Thus, we conclude that whether mRNA polysome formation is affected by splicing depends on the structure of gene in question.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 1. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 16 February 2016.
All research outputs
#18,441,836
of 22,849,304 outputs
Outputs from Frontiers in Microbiology
#19,357
of 24,849 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#216,130
of 297,534 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Frontiers in Microbiology
#418
of 535 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 22,849,304 research outputs across all sources so far. This one is in the 11th percentile – i.e., 11% of other outputs scored the same or lower than it.
So far Altmetric has tracked 24,849 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a little more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 6.3. This one is in the 9th percentile – i.e., 9% of its peers scored the same or lower than it.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 297,534 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one is in the 15th percentile – i.e., 15% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
We're also able to compare this research output to 535 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one is in the 11th percentile – i.e., 11% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
