Identification and evolutionary implication of four novel box H/ACA snoRNAs from Giardia lamblia

During the biogenesis of eukaryotic ribosomes, the nascent pre-rRNA undergoes a complex pattern of nu- cleotide modifications of its mature rRNA sequences, including 2′-O-ribose methylation and pseudouridyla- tion, which are critical for the biogenesis a…

Identification and evolutionary implication of four novel box H/ACA snoRNAs from Giardia lamblia

From a specialized cDNA library, four novel box H/ACA snoRNAs, named GLsR22, GLsR23, GLsR24 and GLsR25, were identified from the primitive eukaryote, Giardia lamblia. Bioinformatics analyses indicated that all of them can be potentially folded into double hairpins, the typical secondary structures of box H/ACA snoRNAs. GLsR24 and GLsR25 are predicted to guide the site-specific pseudouridylation at U1753 and U2396 on 23S rRNA, respectively, while GLsR22 and GLsR23 belong to the family of “orphan” snoRNAs. All of the four novel snoRNAs are encoded by single copy genes and located in small intergenic regions. Interestingly, compared with the counterparts previously reported in Archaea and other unicellular protozoan, the box H/ACA snoRNAs identified from G. lamblia have unique structural features, implying that snoRNAs evolved from prokaryotes to eukaryotes in different ways.