In vivo effects on intron retention and exon skipping by the U2AF large subunit and SF1/BBP in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans
- 1State Key Laboratory of Medical Genetics, School of Biological Sciences and Technology, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan 410078, China
- 2Center for Clinical Gene Diagnosis and Therapy, The Second Xiangya Hospital, State Key Laboratory of Medical Genetics, Central South University, Changsha 410078, China
- 3Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA
- 4Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine, 13125 Berlin, Germany
- 5Department of Biology, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA
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↵6 These authors contributed equally to this work.
Abstract
The in vivo analysis of the roles of splicing factors in regulating alternative splicing in animals remains a challenge. Using a microarray-based screen, we identified a Caenorhabditis elegans gene, tos-1, that exhibited three of the four major types of alternative splicing: intron retention, exon skipping, and, in the presence of U2AF large subunit mutations, the use of alternative 3′ splice sites. Mutations in the splicing factors U2AF large subunit and SF1/BBP altered the splicing of tos-1. 3′ splice sites of the retained intron or before the skipped exon regulate the splicing pattern of tos-1. Our study provides in vivo evidence that intron retention and exon skipping can be regulated largely by the identities of 3′ splice sites.
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Footnotes
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↵7 Corresponding author.
E-mail horvitz{at}mit.edu.
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Article published online ahead of print. Article and publication date are at http://www.rnajournal.org/cgi/doi/10.1261/rna.027458.111.
- Received March 23, 2011.
- Accepted September 27, 2011.
- Copyright © 2011 RNA Society
