Extreme evolutionary stability of conserved non-protein coding element of baculovirus genome

Aim. To estimate a level of evolutionary stability of the baculovirus conserved non protein-coding element (CNE) playing an essential role in baculovirus pathogenesis. Methods. NCBI-BLAST was applied to identify the orthologous sequences in genomes of 50 alphabaculoviruses. The orthologous sequences...

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Hauptverfasser: Makarenko, V.E., Kikhno, I.M., Kashuba, V.I.
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spelling Makarenko, V.E.
Kikhno, I.M.
Kashuba, V.I.
2019-06-13T07:24:52Z
2019-06-13T07:24:52Z
2016
Extreme evolutionary stability of conserved non-protein coding element of baculovirus genome / V.E. Makarenko, I.M. Kikhno, V.I. Kashuba // Вiopolymers and Cell. — 2016. — Т. 32, № 2. — С. 131-139. — Бібліогр.: 37 назв. — англ.
0233-7657
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7124/bc.000916
https://nasplib.isofts.kiev.ua/handle/123456789/152811
577
Aim. To estimate a level of evolutionary stability of the baculovirus conserved non protein-coding element (CNE) playing an essential role in baculovirus pathogenesis. Methods. NCBI-BLAST was applied to identify the orthologous sequences in genomes of 50 alphabaculoviruses. The orthologous sequences were aligned by using ClustalW software. Alistat tool was applied to obtain the pairwise percent identity ( %ID) matrix data. Results. An average pairwise ID value (73 %) calculated for the 1225-member sample was shown to be comparable with those of coding parts of the most conserved baculovirus genes polh and pif2 as well as with those of the polh and p18 promoter regions which are the most conserved representatives of a small group of the evolutionary stable promoter regions of the alphabaculovirus late genes. Conclusion. CNE is one of the most conserved elements of the alphabaculovirus genome.
Мета. Визначити рівень еволюційної стабільності CNE (conserved non protein-coding element) – некодуючого функціонального елементу бакуловірусного геному, що грає виключну роль у патогенезі бакуловірусів. Методи. Для ідентифікації ортологічних послідовностей в геномах 50 альфабакуловірусів застосовували NCBI-BLAST. Ортологічні послідовності вирівнювали за допомогою алгоритму вирівнювання ClustalW. Отримували матрицю значень відсотків ідентичності (percent identity, %ID) для попарних порівняннь за допомогою програми Alistat. Результати. Середній рівень ID (73 %), розрахований для 1225-членної вибірки, виявився порівнюваним з такими показниками кодуючих послідовностей найконсервативніших бакуловірусних генів polh та pif2, а також з показниками промоторних ділянок polh та p18, що є найконсервативнішими представниками невеликої групи еволюційно стабільних промоторних ділянок пізніх генів. Висновки. CNE є одним з найконсервативніших елементів геномів альфабакуловірусів.
Цель. Определить уровень эволюционной стабильности CNE (conserved non protein-coding element) – некодирующего функционального элемента бакуловирусного генома, который играет исключительную роль в патогенезе бакуловирусов. Методы. Для идентификации ортологичных последовательностей в геномах 50 альфабакуловирусов применяли NCBI-BLAST. Ортологичные последовательности выравнивали при помощи алгоритма выравнивания ClustalW. Получали матрицу значений процентов идентичности (percent identity, %ID) для попарных сравнений при помощи программы Alistat. Результаты. Средний уровень ID (73 %), рассчитанный для 1225-членной выборки, является сравнимым с таковыми показателями кодирующих последовательностей наиболее консервативных бакуловирусных генов polh и pif2, а также с показателями промоторных участков polh и p18, которые являются самыми консервативними представителями небольшой группы эволюционно стабильных промоторных участков поздних генов. Выводы. CNE является одним из наиболее консервативных элементов геномов альфабакуловирусов.
en
Інститут молекулярної біології і генетики НАН України
Вiopolymers and Cell
Viruses and Cell
Extreme evolutionary stability of conserved non-protein coding element of baculovirus genome
Надзвичайна еволюційна стабільність консервативного некодуючого елементу (CNE) геному бакуловірусів
Чрезвычайная эволюционная стабильность консервативного некодирующего элемента (CNE) геномов бакуловирусов
Article
published earlier
institution Digital Library of Periodicals of National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine
collection DSpace DC
title Extreme evolutionary stability of conserved non-protein coding element of baculovirus genome
spellingShingle Extreme evolutionary stability of conserved non-protein coding element of baculovirus genome
Makarenko, V.E.
Kikhno, I.M.
Kashuba, V.I.
Viruses and Cell
title_short Extreme evolutionary stability of conserved non-protein coding element of baculovirus genome
title_full Extreme evolutionary stability of conserved non-protein coding element of baculovirus genome
title_fullStr Extreme evolutionary stability of conserved non-protein coding element of baculovirus genome
title_full_unstemmed Extreme evolutionary stability of conserved non-protein coding element of baculovirus genome
title_sort extreme evolutionary stability of conserved non-protein coding element of baculovirus genome
author Makarenko, V.E.
Kikhno, I.M.
Kashuba, V.I.
author_facet Makarenko, V.E.
Kikhno, I.M.
Kashuba, V.I.
topic Viruses and Cell
topic_facet Viruses and Cell
publishDate 2016
language English
container_title Вiopolymers and Cell
publisher Інститут молекулярної біології і генетики НАН України
format Article
title_alt Надзвичайна еволюційна стабільність консервативного некодуючого елементу (CNE) геному бакуловірусів
Чрезвычайная эволюционная стабильность консервативного некодирующего элемента (CNE) геномов бакуловирусов
description Aim. To estimate a level of evolutionary stability of the baculovirus conserved non protein-coding element (CNE) playing an essential role in baculovirus pathogenesis. Methods. NCBI-BLAST was applied to identify the orthologous sequences in genomes of 50 alphabaculoviruses. The orthologous sequences were aligned by using ClustalW software. Alistat tool was applied to obtain the pairwise percent identity ( %ID) matrix data. Results. An average pairwise ID value (73 %) calculated for the 1225-member sample was shown to be comparable with those of coding parts of the most conserved baculovirus genes polh and pif2 as well as with those of the polh and p18 promoter regions which are the most conserved representatives of a small group of the evolutionary stable promoter regions of the alphabaculovirus late genes. Conclusion. CNE is one of the most conserved elements of the alphabaculovirus genome. Мета. Визначити рівень еволюційної стабільності CNE (conserved non protein-coding element) – некодуючого функціонального елементу бакуловірусного геному, що грає виключну роль у патогенезі бакуловірусів. Методи. Для ідентифікації ортологічних послідовностей в геномах 50 альфабакуловірусів застосовували NCBI-BLAST. Ортологічні послідовності вирівнювали за допомогою алгоритму вирівнювання ClustalW. Отримували матрицю значень відсотків ідентичності (percent identity, %ID) для попарних порівняннь за допомогою програми Alistat. Результати. Середній рівень ID (73 %), розрахований для 1225-членної вибірки, виявився порівнюваним з такими показниками кодуючих послідовностей найконсервативніших бакуловірусних генів polh та pif2, а також з показниками промоторних ділянок polh та p18, що є найконсервативнішими представниками невеликої групи еволюційно стабільних промоторних ділянок пізніх генів. Висновки. CNE є одним з найконсервативніших елементів геномів альфабакуловірусів. Цель. Определить уровень эволюционной стабильности CNE (conserved non protein-coding element) – некодирующего функционального элемента бакуловирусного генома, который играет исключительную роль в патогенезе бакуловирусов. Методы. Для идентификации ортологичных последовательностей в геномах 50 альфабакуловирусов применяли NCBI-BLAST. Ортологичные последовательности выравнивали при помощи алгоритма выравнивания ClustalW. Получали матрицу значений процентов идентичности (percent identity, %ID) для попарных сравнений при помощи программы Alistat. Результаты. Средний уровень ID (73 %), рассчитанный для 1225-членной выборки, является сравнимым с таковыми показателями кодирующих последовательностей наиболее консервативных бакуловирусных генов polh и pif2, а также с показателями промоторных участков polh и p18, которые являются самыми консервативними представителями небольшой группы эволюционно стабильных промоторных участков поздних генов. Выводы. CNE является одним из наиболее консервативных элементов геномов альфабакуловирусов.
issn 0233-7657
url https://nasplib.isofts.kiev.ua/handle/123456789/152811
citation_txt Extreme evolutionary stability of conserved non-protein coding element of baculovirus genome / V.E. Makarenko, I.M. Kikhno, V.I. Kashuba // Вiopolymers and Cell. — 2016. — Т. 32, № 2. — С. 131-139. — Бібліогр.: 37 назв. — англ.
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fulltext 131 V. E. Makarenko, I. M. Kikhno, V. I. Kashuba © 2016 V. E. Makarenko et al.; Published by the Institute of Molecular Biology and Genetics, NAS of Ukraine on behalf of Biopolymers and Cell. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited UDC 577 Extreme evolutionary stability of conserved non-protein coding element of baculovirus genome V. E. Makarenko, I. M. Kikhno, V. I. Kashuba Institute of Molecular Biology and Genetics, NAS of Ukraine 150, Akademika Zabolotnoho Str., Kyiv, Ukraine, 03680 i.m.kikhno@imbg.org.ua Aim. To estimate a level of evolutionary stability of the baculovirus conserved non protein-coding element (CNE) playing an essential role in baculovirus pathogenesis. Methods. NCBI-BLAST was applied to identify the orthologous sequences in genomes of 50 alphabaculoviruses. The orthologous sequences were aligned by using ClustalW software. Alistat tool was applied to obtain the pairwise percent identity (%ID) matrix data. Results. An average pairwise ID value (73 %) calculated for the 1225-member sample was shown to be com- parable with those of coding parts of the most conserved baculovirus genes polh and pif2 as well as with those of the polh and p18 promoter regions which are the most conserved representatives of a small group of the evolutionary stable promoter regions of the alphabaculovirus late genes. Conclusion. CNE is one of the most conserved elements of the alphabaculovirus genome. K e y w o r d s. Baculovirus, conserved non-coding element Introduction The recent advances in genome-wide studies have revealed the abundance of extended non-coding re- gions that are conserved at the sequence level across eukaryotic genomes and that are believed to be re- lated to basic processes in a eukaryotic cell [1]. Some of these regions known by several different names (conserved non-coding element, CNE is one among them) have been shown to encode the genes of ncRNA or the 5` and 3` untranslated regions (UTRs) of mRNAs. Others appear to be true non- coding sequences, the functional significance of which is still poorly understandable. Herewith, at least some of them were shown to be involved in transcriptional regulation of the key developmental genes in metazoan genomes [2]. The amenability of RNA-coding CNEs to nega- tive selection reflected in the CNE sequence conser- vation can be explained by the necessity of strictly defined structure of their RNA products for function- al efficiency and/or molecule stability. In contrast, none of the available hypotheses explaining amena- bility of true non-coding CNEs to selective pressure can be found quite satisfactory [3]. The point is that the vast majority of known non-coding elements of the genome (transcription and translation regulators, origins of replication, sites of recombination, scaf- fold attachment sites, etc.) recognized as platforms for the protein trans-factors performing particular DNA trans-actions have been found to evolve too fast to be detected on the basis of their overall se- quence conservation in the genomes of evolution- arily distant organisms, and only short nucleotide stretches (5-10bp), targets for the protein trans-fac- tors, may be expected to constitute their conserved parts. Herewith, regardless of the function that can be attributed to CNEs, the length of these sequences (up to several hundred bps) is much bigger than nec- essary to specify the binding of a single protein ISSN 1993-6842 (on-line); ISSN 0233-7657 (print) Biopolymers and Cell. 2016. Vol. 32. N 2. P 131–139 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.7124/bc.000916 132 V. E. Makarenko, I. M. Kikhno, V. I. Kashuba trans-factor or even several cooperatively acting proteins. Pairwise comparison of eukaryotic genomes re- sults in the identification of a variety of CNEs char- acterized by vastly different levels of the sequence conservation. While the conservation of some of these CNEs appears to be a result of negative selec- tion, the conservation of others may simply reflect the short evolutionary distance or slow rate of neu- tral divergence among the species compared [4]. Therefore, only the sequences showing an extreme level of conservation in comparison with other ge- nome elements can be reliably identified as CNEs which are likely under evolutionary constraint. Some of the most conserved CNEs may exhibit up to 100 % sequence identity (for instance, ultraconserved CNEs in mammals [5]), and some of those may be shared by so distantly related lineages as inverte- brates and vertebrates [6]. Non protein-coding element essential for produc- tive infection has been revealed recently in the ge- nomes of insect pathogens, large dsDNA viruses of family Baculoviridae [7]. The newly discovered ele- ment was shown to express extended homology (152–156 bp) across the representatives of genus Alphabaculovirus and, accordingly it was called CNE. The alphabaculovirus CNE is composed of 7 blocks of absolutely conserved nucleotides inter- spaced by relatively variable nucleotide stretches of conserved length. CNE of Autographa californica nucleopolyhedrovirus (AcMNPV) was found to overlap with short ORF and three ncRNA genes [8], it includes three previously described protein-bind- ing motifs [9] and sequence that activates minimal promoter of adjacent gene ie-2 [10]. The transfec- tion-infection assays using CNE knock out AcMNPV demonstrated that an additional not-yet-defined es- sential function is also attributed to СNE [7]. The present research was aimed at estimation of the degree of CNE sequence conservation measured as percentage of pairwise nucleotide identity (%ID) and comparison with that of other functional ele- ments of alphabaculovirus genome. An average pair- wise percent ID (av %ID) of CNE across 1225 al- phabaculovirus pairs was found to be 73 %. The es- tablished fact that this value greatly exceeds the conservation levels of the vast majority of baculovi- rus genomic functional elements, both coding and non-coding, strongly suggests that CNE represents the essential genome element whose overall se- quence appears to be under strong negative selection Materials and methods The nucleotide sequences of CNE, polh and pif2 were extracted from 50 alphabaculovirus genomes available in GenBank database by using NCBI- BLAST. [The] Members of each orthologous group were aligned by using ClustalW software [11]. [The] %ID matrix table was built by Alistat software [Eddy S. SQUID – C function library for sequence analysis 2005. [http://selab.wustl.edu/cgi-bin/selab.pl?mode =software#squid] 1225-member %ID samples re- sulted from pairwise comparison of 50 orthologs were used for the av %ID calculation and subsequent statistical analysis. Results 1. CNE has evolved very slowly over the evolu- tionary time [The] Phylogenetic studies suggest that the represen- tatives of genus Alphabaculovirus are pretty diverse [12]. It is of interest if the level of virus diversifica- tion is high enough to consider their common ele- ment CNE as a sequence of extreme conservation. Earlier for the 27 particular alphabaculovirus pairs the evolutionary relationships were inferred on the basis of values of average amino acid identity (AAI) across all orthologs shared by two genomes [13–22] (Table S1). CNEs of all members of these pairs were subjected to [the] pairwise %ID analysis. It was found that three most unrelated pairs (LyxyMNPV- AcMNPV, LyxyMNPV- OpMNPV and LyxyMNPV – MaviMNPV) are characterized by 33 % AAI and 67–68 % CNE ID. The 33 % AAI value points that the pairwise amino acid ID of the majority of orthologous proteins shared by the mem- 133 Extreme evolutionary stability of conserved non-protein coding element of baculovirus genome bers of aforementioned pairs is close to so called “twilight zone” (region between 30 % and 20 % ID where homology may exist but cannot be reliably as- sumed [23]). This means that the level of divergence between members of the pair is as high as possible to provide their relatedness detection on the basis of protein homology search. Accordingly, the nucleo- tide similarity search tools are poorly applicable for the reliable detection of the orthologous genes for the members of these virus pairs due to the fact that the sequence similarity degrades more rapidly at the DNA than at the amino acid level [24]. Herewith, in spite of so large divergence between the species, the level of their CNE ID (67–68 %) is still significant for the nucleotide-based similarity detection. Taking into account that the baculovirus replication is char- acterized by a high degree of recombination events, there is theoretical probability that such high level of CNE %ID appears to be the result of a horizontal transfer of CNE between distantly related baculovi- Table S1. List of 27 virus pairs and their AAI and CNE ID percentage value N Virus pair Average aminoacid identity for shared ORFs ( %) CNE identity ( %) Reference 1 HearSNPV-G4-HzSNPV 99 96 [13] 2 HearMNPV- MacoNPV-B 98 98 [14] 3 AcMNPV-BmMNPV 93 90 [15] 4 AcMNPV-RoMNPV 91 94 [16] 5 HearMNPV-MacoNPV-A 90 92 [14] 6 CfDEFMNPV- AgMNPV 88 92 [17] 7 LyxyMNPV- LdMNPV 74 86 [18] 8 CfDEFMNPV- EppoNPV 69 84 [17] 9 CfDEFMNPV- OpMNPV 68 83 [17] 10 CfDEFMNPV- CfMNPV 68 81 [17] 11 HearMNPV- AgseNPV 58 86 [14] 12 AcMNPV- OpMNPV 56 80 [19] 13 AcMNPV - CfDEFMNPV 55 80 [17] 14 OrleNPV - EcobNPV 52 79 [20] 15 OrleNPV - ChchNPV 48 81 [20] 16 HearSNPV-G4- SeMNPV 46 76 [22] 17 AcMNPV- OrleNPV 43 78 [20] 18 AcMNPV - LdMNPV 42 69 [21] 19 HearSNPV-G4- LdMNPV 41 68 [22] 20 HearSNPV-G4- AcMNPV 41 75 [22] 21 HearSNPV-G4- BmNPV 41 78 [22] 22 HearMNPV-HearSNPV-G4 41 76 [14] 23 LyxyMNPV-SeMNPV 37 73 [18] 24 CfDEFMNPV- HearSNPV-G4 35 72 [22] 25 LyxyMNPV- AcMNPV 33 67 [18] 26 LyxyMNPV- OpMNPV 33 67 [18] 27 LyxyMNPv - MaviMNPV 33 68 [18] Standard abbreviations of full virus names are used in the table 134 V. E. Makarenko, I. M. Kikhno, V. I. Kashuba % ID CNE polhPROM polh pif2 p18PROM 40 20 80 100 60 Fig. 2. Box and whisker plot for distribution of ID values for CNE sequence compared with those of the most conserved ele- ments of baculovirus genome. All data were estimated for 1225 alphabaculovirus pairs from 50-member sample. Small black squares indicate average %IDs, horizontal line within boxes dis- play median %IDs. Polh promoter region, polh coding region, pif2 coding region and p18 promoter region are marked as polh- PROM, polh, pif2 and p18PROM respectively. ruses. However, it is not the case with the CNE of viruses above: an analysis of relationship between pairwise AAIs and CNE %IDs (Fig.1) suggests that the distribution of variables follows the linear rela- tionship, and there is no any outlier on the plot in- dicative of CNE transfer between highly unrelated alphabaculoviruses. Thus, based upon the data above, it can be sug- gested that CNE evolved very slowly from the early stages of the alphabaculovirus evolution. 2. CNE conservation level is comparable with those of the most conserved coding regions In order to quantify the relative CNE conservation value we compared the degree of CNE conservation, calculated as an av % ID for the 1225-member sam- ple resulted from pairwise comparison of 50 CNE , with those of the genes coding regions of polh (the most conserved baculovirus protein) and pif2 (the most conserved protein among 34 core proteins shared by all baculoviruses) [25]. In the work pre- sented here we have not checked for, nor removed recombinants, assuming that av %ID values cannot be affected significantly by the presence of some re- combinants in the 1225-member sample. CNE, polh and pif2 sequences were extracted from each of 50 alphabaculovirus genomes available in the GeneBank database and subsequently aligned. 1225 %ID values displayed in the %ID matrix table were subjected to statistical analysis. Box and whisker plots were used to visualize the distribution ranges of %IDs for each orthologous group (Fig. 2). The dataset of each group of orthologs was found to follow a nearly normal distribution (p<0.01). The pairwise IDs values calculated for 1225 virus pairs ranged from 62 % to 100 % (av %ID 73 %) for the CNE, from 79 % to 100 % (av %ID 88 % ) for the polh, and from 43 % to 100 % (av %ID 65 %) for the pif2. The comparison of av %ID of the CNE and re fe- renced genes showed that CNE tends to be more conserved than pif2 and less conserved than polh. Consequently, CNE can be defined as an exceedin- gly conserved genomic element, the conservation degree of which is comparable with that of the co- ding regions of the most conserved baculovirus protein genes. 60 70 80 90 100 % ID CNE % A A I 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 Fig. 1. Relationship between average amino acid identity (AAI) and CNE identity (ID) in alphabaculovirus genomes. The dot plot was created on the basis of 27 virus pairs dataset listed in TanbleS1. 135 Extreme evolutionary stability of conserved non-protein coding element of baculovirus genome 3. CNE is quite unique among baculovirus non- protein coding elements in respect of its evolu- tionary stability Besides CNE, the baculovirus set of the known non protein-coding functional elements includes the pro- moters of different temporal regulation, hrs (homol- ogous repeat regions, that play roles of enhancers and origins of replication), so called non-hr origins of replication (Rewieved in [26]), 5` and 3` UTRs of mRNAs, ncRNA genes (ncRNA of unknown func- tion [8] and microRNA precursor genes [27] are among them). It is well established that the known alphabaculovirus non-hr origins are not alignable [28], as well as hrs originating from the genomes of relatively diverse alphabaculoviruses do not express extended homology, although they contain short conserved palindromic segment, a binding site for ie1 [29]. The nucleotide sequences of baculovirus genes of miRNA precursors were found not being conserved even among closely related baculovirus- es [30]. The question whether CNE is unique among the alphabaculovirus non protein-coding elements in re- spect of extended sequence conservation arises from these data. To clarify this issue we focused on the search for the functional non protein-coding se- quences of extended length shared by the alphabacu- lovirus genomes. The promoter regions of 44 late and very late genes shared by all alphabaculoviruses were cho- sen as a class of elements subjected to the analysis. The baculovirus late and very late genes are spe- cific in the conserved motif (A/T/G)TAAG, which serves as a transcriptional initiator [8]. The 12–18- bp region encompassing the TAAG has been shown as a minimal promoter determinant for the basal transcription from late [31] and very late promoters [32]. AcMNPV was used as a reference virus to de- fine the exact extension of the promoter region (5`UTR in conjunction with overlapping minimal promoter) of each gene because the genuine tran- scription start sites of all AcMNPV genes were de- termined [8]. The regions extracted for the analysis from the AcMNPV genome were bounded by a nucleotide upstream from the translation start co- don and by the 30-bp nucleotide stretch upstream from the transcription start site TAAG. The pro- moter regions less than 40 bp in length were ex- cluded, and finally 37 of 44 regions were chosen for the analysis, including the regions of polh, lef- 9, ODV-e18 , Ac81, lef-5, vlf-1, 38K, gp41, p33, alk-exo, p6.9, lef-2, Ac68, vp91, vp59, p143, pp34, ODV-e25, Ac106, Ac1313, pp31, Ac53, 25K, Ac75, Ac76, p18, ODV-e28, Ac102, F-protein, ODV-c42, me53, p78/83, Ac19, calyx, pkip, Ac60. The recent- ly published phylogenetic tree was used as a guide to infer the evolutionary distances within alphabac- uloviruses [33], and 10 viruses belonging to diverse evolutionary lineages were chosen for the first round of analysis: AcMNPV, EppoNPV, LeseNPV, AgMNPV, OrleNPV, LdMNPV, HearSNPV, TnSNPV, MacoNPV-B, SeMNPV. The promoter regions of each of 37 genes were extracted from each of 10 above genomic sequences. The lengths of extracted sequences were similar to the lengths of their AcMNPV orthologs if their TAAG was found at the position close to that of TAAG site in the AcMNPV promoter region. If the TAAG was absent in the above position the 5`end of the ex- tracted sequence was extended up to the first up- stream TAAG. The multiple sequence alignment was used to as- sess the conservation levels of 37 promoter regions. The consensus sequences derived from the align- ments served as the main criteria of conservation. A strong tendency to the extended sequence conser- vation was clearly displayed by the alignments of 9 promoter regions (polh, ODV-e18, pp34, ODV-e25, pp31, 25K, p18, Ac102, calyx): long sequence stretches (from 40 to 140bp) enriched by absolutely conserved nucleotides were visualized. The most conserved of them assigned to the polh promoter re- gion and the longest of them assigned to the p18 pro- moter region were chosen for the subsequent align- ing using a sample from 50 viruses. The multiple alignments demonstrated that the conserved nucleo- tide stretch of the polh promoter region is represent- ed by full 5`UTR, whereas the conserved nucleotide 136 V. E. Makarenko, I. M. Kikhno, V. I. Kashuba stretch of the p18 promoter region includes not only the full 5`UTR but also a dozen of conserved nucleo- tides located just upstream the TAAG. The %ID datasets of the promoter regions of both genes were found to be distributed nearly normally (p<0.01). ID values of the polh promoter region var- ied from 49 % to 100 % (av %ID 74 %) over se- quence lengths ranging from 39 to 42 bp. ID values of p18 varied from 35 % to 100 % (av %ID 65 %) over sequence lengths ranging from 129 to 145 bp (Fig.2). The comparison of avID values allows the suggestion that CNE index of this value is nearly the same as that of the polh promoter region and higher than that of the p18 promoter region. Discussion In this study the relationship between the CNE con- servation degree and the degree of virus pair diver- gence has been analyzed. This preliminary analysis revealed the tendency to strong evolutionary stabil- ity of CNE. A comparison of the CNE conservation level with those of the nucleotide sequences of genes for the structural proteins under strong evolu- tionary constraint (polh and pif2) and with those of the most conserved promoter regions of the late genes (polh and p18) was done to investigate the observed tendency further. The CNE sequences, gene coding sequences and gene promoter region sequences were extracted from 50 alphabaculovirus genomes available in NCBI database, aligned and subjected to pairwise comparison. Resulting data al- lowed us to recognize the alphabaculovirus CNE as an element of extreme conservation across the 152– 156 bases, being more highly conserved than the vast majority of both coding and non-coding se- quences in the alphabaculovirus genomes. CNE is unique among the previously studied baculovirus non protein-coding elements (hrs, non-hr oris, genes of miRNA precursors) because the latter do not exhibit a tendency of sequence conservation be- tween distantly related alphabaculoviruses (see ref- erences in Results, section3). Of the particular interest are the results of promot- er region analysis conducted within a framework of this study: nine baculovirus late genes (polh, ODV-e18, pp34, ODV-e25, pp31, 25K, p18, Ac102, calyx) were found to be associated with the promoter regions of relatively high levels of sequence conser- vation. ID values of the two most conserved of them (the polh promoter region including 5’UTR and p18 promoter region including 5’UTR and dozen nucleo- tides upstream from the transcription start site) were found to be comparable with the CNE ID value. An extreme conservation of some baculovirus 5`-UTRs is quite explicable: 5`UTRs may represent RNA re- gions that adopt a selectively constrained spatial structure providing molecule stability and/or inter- action with proteins. In contrast, it is difficult to predict whether the re- vealed phenomenon of extreme conservation of the alphabaculovirus CNE specifies its similarity with some eukaryotic CNEs or it indicates the uniqueness of some viral element providing the alphabaculovi- rus-specific function(s). Three alternative (but not mutually exclusive) hy- potheses may be suggested to explain the above phe- nomenon. 1. “The overlap hypothesis”. The CNE represents the region of overlapping several non-coding ele- ments of extended length. The overlapping elements may evolve slowly due to the increasing deleterious effect of mutations affecting more than one element. However, this assumption is valid for the explana- tion of overall high conservation degree of the CNE but the following question remains unanswered: why is the length of quite variable CNE blocks kept unaltered (i.e. are any insertions or deletions within variable regions not allowed)? 2. “The secondary structure hypothesis”. The CNE nucleotide sequence conservation is dictated by significance of the secondary structure of this ele- ment at either DNA or RNA level. This assumption is supported by the fact of CNE enrichment in the dyad symmetry elements that specifies CNE as a se- quence potentially capable of the DNA conforma- tional changes [34], and by the fact that as shown by the AcMNPV transcriptome analysis three ncRNA are likely overlap CNE in the AcMNPV genome [8]. 137 Extreme evolutionary stability of conserved non-protein coding element of baculovirus genome It should be noted, however, that conserved parts of the overlapping ncRNAs represented by CNE were shown not to be essential for the AcMNPV life cycle [7] and this put the necessity of their extreme conser- vation under the question. In addition, the hypothe- sis can be considered strictly valid only if the CNE- overlapping ncRNAs would be identified in all other alphabaculovirus genomes. 3. “The module hypothesis”. CNE appears to be the module, consisting of several conserved motifs, which bind cooperatively acting proteins. These modules, within which the particular distances be- tween protein-binding sites provide interaction of bound proteins, were predicted by bioinformatic ap- proaches in eukaryotic genomes [35]. Herewith, such organization has been observed only in very few cases of transcriptional regulatory elements [36], among them the most studied is the enhancer of interferon-β gene that rather represents [a] par- ticular case as it consists of numerous non spaced overlapping motifs [37]. While [the] c4-c5 CNE conserved block was shown to be the only which bind[s] proteins at 40 hours post infection [9], c2, c3 and c6 blocks remain the candidate binding motifs for cooperatively acting proteins at some other time point. 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Для ідентифікації ортологічних послідовностей в геномах 50 альфабакуловірусів застосовували NCBI-BLAST. Ортологічні послідовності вирів- нювали за допомогою алгоритму вирівнювання ClustalW. Отримували матрицю значень відсотків ідентичності (percent identity, %ID) для попарних порівняннь за допомогою програ- ми Alistat. Результати. Середній рівень ID (73 %), розрахова- ний для 1225-членної вибірки, виявився порівнюваним з таки- ми показниками кодуючих послідовностей найконсервативні- ших бакуловірусних генів polh та pif2, а також з показниками промоторних ділянок polh та p18, що є найконсервативнішими представниками невеликої групи еволюційно стабільних про- моторних ділянок пізніх генів. Висновки. CNE є одним з най- консервативніших елементів геномів альфабакуловірусів. К л юч ов і с л ов а: бакуловіруси, консервативний некодую- чий елемент. Чрезвычайная эволюционная стабильность консервативного некодирующего элемента (CNE) геномов бакуловирусов В. Э. Макаренко, И. В. Кихно, В. И. Кашуба Цель. Определить уровень эволюционной стабильности CNE (conserved non protein-coding element) – некодирующего функ- 139 Extreme evolutionary stability of conserved non-protein coding element of baculovirus genome ционального элемента бакуловирусного генома, который игра- ет исключительную роль в патогенезе бакуловирусов. Методы. Для идентификации ортологичных последовательностей в ге- номах 50 альфабакуловирусов применяли NCBI-BLAST. Ортологичные последовательности выравнивали при помощи алгоритма выравнивания ClustalW. Получали матрицу значе- ний процентов идентичности (percent identity, %ID) для попар- ных сравнений при помощи программы Alistat. Результаты. Средний уровень ID (73 %), рассчитанный для 1225-членной выборки, является сравнимым с таковыми показателями коди- рующих последовательностей наиболее консервативных баку- ловирусных генов polh и pif2, а также с показателями промо- торных участков polh и p18, которые являются самыми консер- вативними представителями небольшой группы эволюционно стабильных промоторных участков поздних генов. Выводы. CNE является одним из наиболее консервативных элементов геномов альфабакуловирусов. К л юч е в ы е с л ов а: бакуловирусы, консервативный неко- дирующий элемент Received 11.02.2016