molecular biology Molecular biology is the branch of biology that seeks to understand the molecular basis of biological activity in and between cells, including biomolecular synthesis, modification, mechanisms, and interactions. The study of chemical and physi ...

, the

protein domain In molecular biology, a protein domain is a region of a protein's polypeptide chain that is self-stabilizing and that folds independently from the rest. Each domain forms a compact folded three-dimensional structure. Many proteins consist of ...

SWAP is derived from the term Suppressor-of-White-APricot, a splicing regulator from the model organism ''

Drosophila ''Drosophila'' () is a genus of flies, belonging to the family Drosophilidae, whose members are often called "small fruit flies" or (less frequently) pomace flies, vinegar flies, or wine flies, a reference to the characteristic of many speci ...

melanogaster''. The

is found in regulators that control splicing. It is found in splicing

regulatory Regulation is the management of complex systems according to a set of rules and trends. In systems theory, these types of rules exist in various fields of biology and society, but the term has slightly different meanings according to context. Fo ...

protein Proteins are large biomolecules and macromolecules that comprise one or more long chains of amino acid residues. Proteins perform a vast array of functions within organisms, including catalysing metabolic reactions, DNA replication, res ...

s. When a gene is expressed the DNA must be transcribed into messenger RNA (mRNA). However, it sometimes contains intervening or interrupting sequences named

introns An intron is any nucleotide sequence within a gene that is not expressed or operative in the final RNA product. The word ''intron'' is derived from the term ''intragenic region'', i.e. a region inside a gene."The notion of the cistron .e., gene ...

mRNA splicing RNA splicing is a process in molecular biology where a newly-made precursor messenger RNA (pre-mRNA) transcript is transformed into a mature messenger RNA (mRNA). It works by removing all the introns (non-coding regions of RNA) and ''splicing'' ba ...

helps to remove these sequences, leaving a more favourable sequence. mRNA splicing is an essential event in the

post-transcriptional modification Transcriptional modification or co-transcriptional modification is a set of biological processes common to most eukaryotic cells by which an RNA primary transcript is chemically altered following transcription from a gene to produce a mature, fu ...

process of gene expression. SWAP helps to control this process in all cells except

gametes A gamete (; , ultimately ) is a haploid cell that fuses with another haploid cell during fertilization in organisms that reproduce sexually. Gametes are an organism's reproductive cells, also referred to as sex cells. In species that produce ...

Function

The role of the protein domain SWAP is to control sex-independent pre-

mRNA In molecular biology, messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) is a single-stranded molecule of RNA that corresponds to the genetic sequence of a gene, and is read by a ribosome in the process of synthesizing a protein. mRNA is created during the ...

processing in somatic cells, that is, in every cell except the

sex cells Sex is the trait that determines whether a sexually reproducing animal or plant produces male or female gametes. Male plants and animals produce smaller mobile gametes (spermatozoa, sperm, pollen), while females produce larger ones ( ova, of ...

This includes autoregulation, whereby it regulates the splicing of its own pre-mRNA. The mammalian homologue of SWAP acts as a thyroid hormone regulated gene. This mean it is controlled by the thyroid.

Structure

SWAP

s share a colinearly arrayed series of novel sequence motifs. This means that they have been conserved over time. The SWAP protein in different organisms share some similarity in terms of sequence and may have been related at some point in evolutionary history.

References

{{InterPro content, IPR000061 Protein families Protein domains Genetics