Characterization of mammalian Lipocalin UTRs in silico: Predictions for their role in post-transcriptional regulation

The Lipocalin family is a group of homologous proteins characterized by its big array of functional capabilities. As extracellular proteins, they can bind small hydrophobic ligands through a well-conserved β-barrel folding. Lipocalins evolutionary history sprawls across many different taxa and shows great divergence even within chordates. This variability is also found in their heterogeneous tissue expression pattern. Although a handful of promoter regions have been previously described, studies on UTR regulatory roles in Lipocalin gene expression are scarce. Here we report a comprehensive bioinformatic analysis showing that complex post-transcriptional regulation exists in Lipocalin genes, as suggested by the presence of alternative UTRs with substantial sequence conservation in mammals, alongside a high diversity of transcription start sites and alternative promoters. Strong selective pressure could have operated upon Lipocalins UTRs, leading to an enrichment in particular sequence motifs that limit the choice of secondary structures. Mapping these regulatory features to the expression pattern of early and late diverging Lipocalins suggests that UTRs represent an additional phylogenetic signal, which may help to uncover how functional pleiotropy originated within the Lipocalin family.