Abstract
The influence of microRNAs (miRNAs) on the expression of conserved genes is well established now, but their role in regulating evolutionarily young genes remains largely unexplored. The lawc gene emerged de novo within the 5'-untranslated region (UTR) of the Trf2 gene. We used this gene pair as a model system to investigate whether miRNAs may act as evolutionary adaptation tools ensuring coordinated expression of overlapping genes. Transgenic Drosophila lines with the inducible expression of miRNA (miR-4968, miR-2491, miR-13b-1) precursors along with a GFP-based sensor were employed to visualize miRNA-mediated repression of the target sequences in vivo. Tissue-specific transgene activation was achieved using the yeast Gal4/UAS system. Luciferase assay in Drosophila S2 and human HEK293 cells confirmed the activity of a unique promoter predicted within the coding sequence (CDS) of the lawc gene and enabled assessment of the miRNA-mediated regulation of lawc expression in S2 cells. Additionally, we analyzed protein and mRNA levels and visualized activity of the GFP sensor in Drosophila tissues by immunoblotting, RT-PCR, and confocal microscopy, respectively. Our findings experimentally validate the functionality of the internal promoter within the lawc CDS and demonstrate the role of evolutionarily young miRNAs in modulating its expression. Using lawc as an example, we showed that CDS-located promoters are not exclusive to prokaryotes and yeast but can also occur in evolutionarily young genes of higher eukaryotes that arise within the regulatory regions of other genes. Notably, such genes rapidly become regulated by miRNAs of a similar evolutionary age, suggesting a co-evolutionary mechanism that underlies the formation of new regulatory networks and may facilitate adaptation of both genes to their overlapping configuration.
