Zenina, O.S., Fedoseeva, D.M., Kretova, O.V., Tchurikov, N.A. (2013). Molecular analysis of transcription start sites of separate copies of the suffix short retroelement in genome of Drosophila.  Dokl. Biochem. Biophys. 449(): 112--115.

FBrf0221509

Research paper

In order to study TSS in the suffix element, we used total RNA isolated from ovaries of Drosophila melanogaster. Using a 5'-RACE System (Invitrogen) and 454 sequencing, we found the full-length suffix sense transcripts. However, most 5'-RACE reads (>70%) correspond to 5'-truncated transcripts lacking the first 33-39 nucleotides. The data may indicate that these RNAs are products of the RNAi-related silencing mech-anism producing small RNAs that are larger than piRNAs. The full-length suffix transcripts could arise either from the F element or from active separate copies of suffix.