Alternative polyadenylation (APA) of mRNAs has emerged as an important mechanism for post-transcriptional gene regulation in higher eukaryotes. Although microarrays have recently been used to characterize APA globally, they have a number of serious limitations that prevents comprehensive and highly quantitative analysis. To better characterize APA and its regulation, we have developed a deep sequencing-based method called Poly(A) Site Sequencing (PAS-Seq) for quantitatively profiling RNA polyadenylation at the transcriptome level. PAS-Seq not only accurately and comprehensively identifies poly(A) junctions in mRNAs and noncoding RNAs, but also provides quantitative information on the relative abundance of polyadenylated RNAs. PAS-Seq analyses of human and mouse transcriptomes showed that 40%-50% of all expressed genes produce alternatively polyadenylated mRNAs. Furthermore, our study detected evolutionarily conserved polyadenylation of histone mRNAs and revealed novel features of mitochondrial RNA polyadenylation. Finally, PAS-Seq analyses of mouse embryonic stem (ES) cells, neural stem/progenitor (NSP) cells, and neurons not only identified more poly(A) sites than what was found in the entire mouse EST database, but also detected significant changes in the global APA profile that lead to lengthening of 39 untranslated regions (UTR) in many mRNAs during stem cell differentiation. Together, our PAS-Seq analyses revealed a complex landscape of RNA polyadenylation in mammalian cells and the dynamic regulation of APA during stem cell differentiation.
The SR proteins are not only involved in pre-mRNA splicing but in mRNA export and the initiation of translation.
A hammerhead ribozyme (HH16) with eight potential base pairs in each of the substrate recognition helices stabilized product binding sufficiently to enable investigation of the ligation of oligonucleotides bound to the ribozyme. All individual rate constants for product association and dissociation were determined. The following conclusions were obtained for HH16 from the analysis performed at 50 mM Tris, pH 7.5, 10 mM MgC12, and 25 "C.(1) HH16 cleaves bound substrate with a rate constant of k2 = 1 min-l, similar to rate constants obtained with other hammerhead ribozymes. (2) k-2, the rate of ligation of the 5' product and 3' product to form substrate, equaled 0.008 min-I, indicating an approximately 100-fold preference for the formation of products on the ribozyme. This internal equilibrium, compared with that for the overall solution reaction, gives an effective concentration (EC) of M for the two products bound to the ribozyme. This low EC suggests that upon cleavage of S the hammerhead complex acquires a "floppiness" which provides an entropic advantage for the formation of products on the ribozyme. (3) Product and substrate association rate constants were in the range of 107-108 M-1 min-l, comparable to values determined for short helices. (4) The stabilities of ribozyme/product complexes were similar to affinities predicted from helix-coil transitions of simple R N A duplexes, providing no indication of additional tertiary interactions. The products, P1 and P2, stabilize one another 4-fold on the ribozyme. ( 5 ) The dissociation constant for the binding of the substrate to the ribozyme was estimated to be about M.These results allowed the construction of a free energy profile for the reaction of HH16, and provide a basis for future mechanistic studies.Several plant viroids and virusoids autolytically cleave at a specific phosphodiester bond (Buzayan et al., 1986a,b;Hutchins et al., 1986; Prody et al., 1986). A consensus secondary structure of approximately 55 nucleotides termed the "hammerhead" domain has been identified (Buzayan et al., 1986b; Forster & Symons, 1987a,b) which can be assembled from 2 or 3 separate RNA molecules. Thus, the self-cleaving reaction has been turned into a multiple turnover reaction, with separate oligonucleotides acting as the "ribozyme" and the "substrate" (Figure 1) (Sampson et al., 1987;Uhlenbeck, 1987;Haseloff & Gerlach, 1988;Koizumi et al., 1988 Koizumi et al., , 1989 Jeffries & Symons, 1989 p3WAACGUC>p; PI-G, GGGAACGUCG; P1-3'p, GGGAACGUC3'-p; P2, GUCGUCGC; P2-C, GUCGUCGCC; P2-p'zCp, GUCGUCGCp"Cp; S-C, GG-G AACGUCGUCGUCGCC; p3*S-C, p3WAACGUCGUCGUCGCC; S-p'zCp, GGGAACGUCGUCGUCGCpWp; S, GGGAACGUC-GUCGUCGC; p32S, p32GGGAACGUCGUCGUCGC; E, ribozyme; HH16, hammerhead cleavage motif comprised of separate ribozyme and substrate oligonucleotides ( (HH 16). Using standardized hammerhead nomenclature (Hertel et al., 1992), the ribozyme (E), comprised of 38 nucleotides, catalyzes thecleavageof a specific phosphodiester bond within its 1 8-nucleotidelong substrate (S-C), ...
The splicing of pre-mRNAs is an essential step of gene expression in eukaryotes. Introns are removed from split genes through the activities of the spliceosome, a large ribonuclear machine that is conserved throughout the eukaryotic lineage. While unicellular eukaryotes are characterized by less complex splicing, pre-mRNA splicing of multicellular organisms is often associated with extensive alternative splicing that significantly enriches their proteome. The alternative selection of splice sites and exons permits multicellular organisms to modulate gene expression patterns in a cell type specific fashion, thus contributing to their functional diversification. Alternative splicing is a regulated process that is mainly influenced by the activities of splicing regulators, such as SR proteins or hnRNPs. These modular factors have evolved from a common ancestor through gene duplication events to a diverse group of splicing regulators that mediate exon recognition through their sequence specific binding to pre-mRNAs. Given the strong correlations between intron expansion, the complexity of pre-mRNA splicing, and the emergence of splicing regulators, it is argued that the increased presence of SR and hnRNP proteins promoted the evolution of alternative splicing through relaxation of the sequence requirements of splice junctions.
The exon͞intron architecture of genes determines whether components of the spliceosome recognize splice sites across the intron or across the exon. Using in vitro splicing assays, we demonstrate that splice-site recognition across introns ceases when intron size is between 200 and 250 nucleotides. Beyond this threshold, splice sites are recognized across the exon. Splice-site recognition across the intron is significantly more efficient than splice-site recognition across the exon, resulting in enhanced inclusion of exons with weak splice sites. Thus, intron size can profoundly influence the likelihood that an exon is constitutively or alternatively spliced. An EST-based alternative-splicing database was used to determine whether the exon͞intron architecture influences the probability of alternative splicing in the Drosophila and human genomes. Drosophila exons flanked by long introns display an up to 90-foldhigher probability of being alternatively spliced compared with exons flanked by two short introns, demonstrating that the exon͞ intron architecture in Drosophila is a major determinant in governing the frequency of alternative splicing. Exon skipping is also more likely to occur when exons are flanked by long introns in the human genome. Interestingly, experimental and computational analyses show that the length of the upstream intron is more influential in inducing alternative splicing than is the length of the downstream intron. We conclude that the size and location of the flanking introns control the mechanism of splice-site recognition and influence the frequency and the type of alternative splicing that a pre-mRNA transcript undergoes.alternative splicing ͉ bioinformatics ͉ EST database ͉ intron length P re-mRNA splicing is an essential process that accounts for many aspects of regulated gene expression. Of the Ϸ25,000 genes encoded by the human genome (1), Ͼ60% are believed to produce transcripts that are alternatively spliced. Thus, alternative splicing of pre-mRNAs can lead to the production of multiple protein isoforms from a single pre-mRNA, exponentially enriching the proteomic diversity of higher eukaryotic organisms (2, 3). Because regulation of this process can determine when and where a particular protein isoform is produced, changes in alternative-splicing patterns modulate many cellular activities.The spliceosome assembles onto the pre-mRNA in a coordinated manner by binding to sequences located at the 5Ј and 3Ј ends of introns. Spliceosome assembly is initiated by the stable associations of the U1 small nuclear ribonucleoprotein particle with the 5Ј splice site, branch-point-binding protein͞SF1 with the branch point, and U2 snRNP auxiliary factor with the pyrimidine tract (4). ATP hydrolysis then leads to the stable association of U2 snRNP at the branch-point and functional splice-site pairing (5).Intron size has been correlated with rates of evolution (6) and the regulation of genome size (7,8). The exon͞intron architecture has also been shown to influence splice-site recognition (9-11)....
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