Author: SIMON SILVER Department of Microbiology & Immunology University of Illinois Chicago, p.19
Why do trypanosomes have mitochondrial genes that are only partial and need the insertion of dozens of uridine residues (copied from small guide RNAs)? Now a slime mold has a gene for the major ATP synthase a subunit that needs 54 insertions of cytidine to correct frame shifts from the missing bases. The mitochondrial genes of eucaryotic microbes are strange.
R. Mahendran, M.R. Spottswood, D.L. Miller, "RNA editing by cytidine insertion in mitochondria of Physarum polycephalum," Nature, 349, 434-8, 31 January 1991. (University of Texas, Dallas) Super antigens trigger proliferation of an entire class of T cells rather than only those whose variable determinant (of the T cell receptor) recognizes the hapten group. Now the Mls genes that stimulate growth of CD4 T cells have been found to be retroviruses, maternally inherited via milk. The Mls genes ...
