Mitochondrial Transcription Termination Factor (MTERF)

SPN	U219
HGNC	21463
MGI	1918240
PubMed	15671493
RGD	621318
UniProt	Q99551
Wiki	MTERF

Mitochondrial transcription termination factor, also known as MTERF, is a protein which in humans is encoded by the MTERF gene.This gene encodes a mitochondrial transcription termination factor. This protein participates in attenuating transcription from the mitochondrial genome; this attenuation allows higher levels of expression of 16S ribosomal RNA relative to the tRNA gene downstream.

The product of this gene has three leucine zipper motifs bracketed by two basic domains that are all required for DNA binding. There is evidence that, for this protein, the zippers participate in intramolecular interactions that establish the three-dimensional structure required for DNA binding.

Reference

"The human mitochondrial transcription termination factor (mTERF) is a multizipper protein but binds to DNA as a monomer, with evidence pointing to intramolecular leucine zipper interactions."
EMBO J. 16:1066-1079(1997) [PubMed] [Europe PMC] [Abstract]

"Human chromosome 7: DNA sequence and biology."
Science 300:767-772(2003) [PubMed] [Europe PMC] [Abstract]

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Nature 424:157-164(2003) [PubMed] [Europe PMC] [Abstract]

"The status, quality, and expansion of the NIH full-length cDNA project: the Mammalian Gene Collection (MGC)."
Genome Res. 14:2121-2127(2004) [PubMed] [Europe PMC] [Abstract]

"Phosphorylation of rat mitochondrial transcription termination factor (mTERF) is required for transcription termination but not for binding to DNA."
Nucleic Acids Res. 32:2059-2068(2004) [PubMed] [Europe PMC] [Abstract]

"Helix unwinding and base flipping enable human MTERF1 to terminate mitochondrial transcription."
Cell 141:982-993(2010) [PubMed] [Europe PMC] [Abstract]

"Human mitochondrial mTERF wraps around DNA through a left-handed superhelical tandem repeat."
Nat. Struct. Mol. Biol. 17:891-893(2010) [PubMed] [Europe PMC] [Abstract]