Study of the role of long non-coding RNA ROX in maintaining of the dosage compensation complex in Drosophila melanogaster

Abstract

The proteins MSL1, MSL2, MSL3, MLE, MOF and non-coding RNAs roX1 and roX2 form the Drosophila dosage compensation complex (DCC), which specifically binds to the X chromosome of males. It is known that non-coding RNA roX are primary component of the DCC in the process of assembly and spreading of the complex among the X chromosome of males. However, it still remains unclear the role of this RNA in maintaining the structure of the already assembled complex. In this work, we have shown that the full-assembled complex of dosage compensation dissociates rather weakly when treated with RNases: the MLE helicase is effectively released from the complex, and the remaining protein components, MSL1, MSL2 and MSL3, undergo partial disassembly and continue to be part of subcomplexes. The results confirm the importance of the non-coding RNA roX2 not only in the processes of initiation of CDK assembly, but also at the stage of maintaining the structure of the already assembled complex.