Molecular analysis of porcine TDRD10 gene: a novel member of the TDRD family

Tudor domain-containing proteins (TDRDs) are characterized by various numbers of Tudor domains, which are known to recognize and bind to symmetric methylated arginine residues. These proteins affect a wide variety of processes, including differentiation, genome stability and gametogenesis. In mammals, there are 12 members (TDRD1-TDRD12) in the TDRD protein family. Among them, the information about TDRD10 is less known. Here, we analyzed the sequence and structure properties of porcine TDRD10 gene, and examined its expression profile and subcellular distribution. Our data show that porcine TDRD10 has an opening reading frame (ORF) of 1068 bp, which encodes 355 amino acids. It localizes to chromosome 4. The gene product of porcine TDRD10 contains a Tudor domain and a RNA recognition motif (RRM). Serial deletion shows that the 5'-flanking sequence of porcine TDRD10 contains several negative and positive regulatory elements and identifies a 670-bp TATA-less region as an optimal promoter. Site-directed mutagenesis reveals that the nucleotides from -451 to -445 relative to the transcriptional start site forms one of the very important positive regulatory elements. Real time PCR detects the highest expression level of porcine TDRD10 gene in heart among 12 tissues. In PK15 cells, it mainly distributed in the cell nucleus, but also exhibited localization to the cytoplasm. These results increase our knowledge of TDRD10 gene, and provide basis for further investigation of its function.