Telomere-containing lncRNAs produced during Oxytricha conjugation

The ciliate Oxytricha trifallax maintains two genomes: a germline genome that is active only during sexual conjugation and a transcriptionally active, somatic genome that derives from the germline via extensive sequence reduction and rearrangement. Previous experiments showed that long, telomere-containing RNA copies of somatic chromosomes provide the information to program the rearrangement process. To study the global landscape of these “template” lncRNAs and how they relate to genome rearrangement, we used a PCR-based method to selectively amplify telomere-containing RNAs produced over a time course of Oxytricha conjugation and genome rearrangement.