Project description:The functional consequences for alternative splicing of altering the transcription rate have been the subject of intensive study in mammalian cells but less is known about effects on splicing of changing the transcription rate in yeast. We present several lines of evidence showing that slow RNA polymerase II elongation increases both co-transcriptional splicing and splicing efficiency and faster elongation reduces co transcriptional splicing and splicing efficiency in budding yeast, suggesting that splicing is more efficient when co-transcriptional. Moreover, we demonstrate that altering RNA polymerase II elongation rate in either direction compromises splicing fidelity, and we reveal that splicing fidelity depends largely on intron length together with secondary structure and splice site score. These effects are notably stronger for the highly expressed ribosomal protein coding transcripts. We propose that transcription by RNA polymerase II is tuned to optimise the efficiency and accuracy of ribosomal protein gene expression, while allowing flexibility in splice site choice with the nonribosomal protein transcripts.
Project description:The recognition of 5’ splice site (5’ ss) is one of the earliest steps of pre-mRNA splicing. To better understand the mechanism and regulation of 5’ ss recognition, we selectively humanized components of the yeast U1 snRNP to reveal the function of these components in 5’ ss recognition and splicing. We targeted U1C and Luc7, two proteins that interact with and stabilize the yeast U1 (yU1) snRNA and the 5’ ss RNA duplex. We replaced the Zinc-Finger (ZnF) domain of yU1C with its human counterpart, which resulted in cold-sensitive growth phenotype and moderate splicing defects. Next, we added an auxin-inducible degron to yLuc7 protein and found that Luc7-depleted yU1 snRNP resulted in the concomitant loss of PRP40 and Snu71 (two other essential yeast U1 snRNP proteins), and further biochemical analyses suggest a model of how these three proteins interact with each other in the U1 snRNP. The loss of these proteins resulted in a significant growth retardation accompanied by a global suppression of pre-mRNA splicing. The splicing suppression led to mitochondrial dysfunction as revealed by a release of Fe2+ into the growth medium and an induction of mitochondrial reactive oxygen species. Together, these observations indicate that the human U1C ZnF can substitute that of yeast, Luc7 is essential for the incorporation of the Luc7-Prp40-Snu71 trimer into yeast U1 snRNP, and splicing plays a major role in the regulation of mitochondria function in yeast.
Project description:To identify conditional alleles which disrupt the splicing pathway, we screened a collection of ~2000 chemically mutagenized temperature-sensitive fission yeast isolates for intron accumulation in three introns, including a naturally occurring U2-dependent AT-AC intron. We identified 54 strains which accumulate unspliced message at the non-permissive temperature. A combination of mutation effect prediction and genetic mapping techniques revealed missense mutations in core splicing genes which function at various steps of spliceosome assembly and activation including: prp10, prp28, sap61, ntr1, spp42, sap114, cwf22, and prp22. Interrogation of structural data and genome-wide analysis of the splicing defects in these mutations revealed intron-specific defects which suggest the biochemical basis for these mutations’ effects on splicing.
Project description:Mammalian SR proteins are a family of reversibly phosphorylated RNA binding proteins primarily studied for their roles in alternative splicing. While budding yeast lack alternative splicing, they do have three SR-like proteins: Npl3, Gbp2, and Hrb1. However, these have been primarily studied for their roles in mRNA export, leaving their potential roles in splicing largely unexplored. Here we combined high-density genetic interaction profiling and genome-wide splicing-sensitive microarray analysis to demonstrate that a single SR-like protein, Npl3, is required for efficient splicing of a large set of pre-mRNAs in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. We tested the hypothesis that Npl3 promotes splicing by facilitating co-transcriptional recruitment of splicing factors. Using chromatin immunoprecipitation, we showed that mutation of NPL3 reduces the occupancy of U1 and U2 snRNPs at Npl3-stimulated genes. This provides the first evidence that an SR protein can promote recruitment of splicing factors to chromatin.
Project description:Recent ChIP experiments indicate that spliceosome assembly and splicing can occur cotranscriptionally in S. cerevisiae. However, only a few genes have been examined, and all have long second exons. To extend these studies, we analyzed intron-containing genes with different second exon lengths, by ChIP as well as by whole-genome tiling arrays (ChIP-CHIP). The data indicate that U1 snRNP recruitment is independent of exon length. Recursive splicing constructs, which uncouple U1 recruitment from transcription, suggest that cotranscriptional U1 recruitment contributes to optimal splicing efficiency. In contrast, U2 snRNP recruitment as well as cotranscriptional splicing is deficient on short second exon-genes. We estimate that approximately 90% of endogenous yeast splicing is post-transcriptional, consistent with an analysis of post-transcriptional snRNP-associated pre-mRNA. Keywords: ChIP-CHIP
Project description:Mammalian SR proteins are a family of reversibly phosphorylated RNA binding proteins primarily studied for their roles in alternative splicing. While budding yeast lack alternative splicing, they do have three SR-like proteins: Npl3, Gbp2, and Hrb1. However, these have been primarily studied for their roles in mRNA export, leaving their potential roles in splicing largely unexplored. Here we combined high-density genetic interaction profiling and genome-wide splicing-sensitive microarray analysis to demonstrate that a single SR-like protein, Npl3, is required for efficient splicing of a large set of pre-mRNAs in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. We tested the hypothesis that Npl3 promotes splicing by facilitating co-transcriptional recruitment of splicing factors. Using chromatin immunoprecipitation, we showed that mutation of NPL3 reduces the occupancy of U1 and U2 snRNPs at Npl3-stimulated genes. This provides the first evidence that an SR protein can promote recruitment of splicing factors to chromatin. Splicing-specific microarrays were used to assay changes to splicing in single and double deletion mutants of non-essential SR proteins, in a deletion mutant of a non-essential component of the nonsense-mediated decay pathway, and in a double deletion mutant of in an SR protein plus a non-sense mediated decay factor in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. The data includes both samples obtained at the permissive temperature and also shifts to the non-permissive temperature for some mutants, as well as dye-flipped technical replicates.
Project description:During meiosis in yeast, global splicing efficiency increases. The mechanism for this is relief of competition for the splicing machinery by repression of intron-containing ribosomal protein genes (RPGs). Repression of RPGs with rapamycin also increases splicing efficiency in vegetative cells. Reducing levels of an RPG-dedicated transcription factor globally improves splicing and suppresses the temperature-sensitive growth defect of a spliceosome mutation. These results indicate that the spliceosome is limiting and pre-mRNAs compete with each other. Under these conditions, splicing efficiency of a given pre-mRNA therefore depends on both its concentration and affinity for the limiting splicing factor(s) as well as those of the competing pre-mRNAs. We propose that trans-competition control of splicing helps repress meiotic gene expression in vegetative cells, and promotes efficient meiosis. Competition between RNAs for a limiting factor may be a general condition important for function of a variety of post-transcriptional control mechanisms. Splicing and gene expression profiles of 1) wild type yeast cells treated with rapamycin (2 biological replicates) relative to untreated cells and 2) prp4-1 pGAL-IFH1 (down-regulated expression of IFH1 transcription factor(specific for ribosomal protein genes)) relative to prp4-1 yeast.
Project description:Appropriate expression of most eukaryotic genes requires the removal of introns from their pre-messenger RNAs (pre-mRNAs), a process catalyzed by the spliceosome. In higher eukaryotes a large family of auxiliary factors known as SR proteins can improve the splicing efficiency of transcripts containing suboptimal splice sites by interacting with distinct sequences present in those pre-mRNAs. The yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae lacks functional equivalents of most of these factors; thus, it has been unclear whether the spliceosome could effectively distinguish among transcripts. To address this question, we have used a microarray-based approach to examine the effects of mutations in 18 highly conserved core components of the spliceosomal machinery. The kinetic profiles reveal clear differences in the splicing defects of particular pre-mRNA substrates. Most notably, the behaviors of ribosomal protein gene transcripts are generally distinct from other intron-containing transcripts in response to several spliceosomal mutations. However, dramatically different behaviors can be seen for some pairs of transcripts encoding ribosomal protein gene paralogs, suggesting that the spliceosome can readily distinguish between otherwise highly similar pre-mRNAs. The ability of the spliceosome to distinguish among its different substrates may therefore offer an important opportunity for yeast to regulate gene expression in a transcript-dependent fashion. Given the high level of conservation of core spliceosomal components across eukaryotes, we expect that these results will significantly impact our understanding of how regulated splicing is controlled in higher eukaryotes as well. Keywords: time course, splicing mutant, splicing-specific microarray