The work describes how two proteins, JIL-1 and Z4 known to be important for chromosome structure in Drosophila, are involved in the transcription, length and stability of Drosphila melanogaster telomeres. Although Drosophila is the telomerase exception better studied so far, the mechanism and regulation of retrotransposon telomeres are still far from being understood. The key of an efficient telomere maintenance mechanism based on specific transposition at the end of the chromosomes lies in achieving a fine tuned equilibrium that on one hand provides enough transposition intermediates to elongate the end of the chromosome whenever needed, and on the other avoids excessive terminal transposition which could result in telomere and genomic instability. Here we demonstrate that the proteins JIL-1 and Z4 act coordinately in order to precisely regulate the HeT-A retrotransposon, the main component of D.melanogaster telomeres.

This work makes important contributions to telomere biology in general and in Drosophila telomeres in particular. Moreover, our results published in this paper are of importance for those groups interested in transposable element regulation and the interaction between transposable elements and eukaryote genomes.

Reference Article: Silva-Sousa R, López-Panadès E, Piñeyro D, Casacuberta E (2012) The Chromosomal Proteins JIL-1 and Z4/Putzig Regulate the Telomeric Chromatin in Drosophila melanogaster. PLoS Genet 8(12): e1003153. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1003153