Functional and Structural Analysis of Maize Hsp101 IRES

Maize heat shock protein of 101 KDa (HSP101) is essential for thermotolerance induction in this plant. The mRNA encoding this protein harbors an IRES element in the 5′UTR that mediates cap-independent translation initiation. In the current work it is demonstrated that hsp101 IRES comprises the entire 5′UTR sequence (150 nts), since deletion of 17 nucleotides from the 5′ end decreased translation efficiency by 87% compared to the control sequence. RNA structure analysis of maize hsp101 IRES revealed the presence of three stem-loops toward its 5′ end, whereas the remainder sequence contains a great proportion of unpaired nucleotides. Furthermore, HSP90 protein was identified by mass spectrometry as the protein preferentially associated with the maize hsp101 IRES. In addition, it has been found that eIFiso4G rather than eIF4G initiation factor mediates translation of the maize hsp101 mRNA.