Abstract
Eukaryotes have two types of spliceosomes, comprised of either major (U1, U2, U4, U5, U6) or minor (U11, U12, U4atac, U6atac; <1%) snRNPs. The high conservation of minor introns, typically one amidst many major introns in several hundred genes, despite their poor splicing, has been a long-standing enigma. Here, we discovered that the low abundance minor spliceosome’s catalytic snRNP, U6atac, is strikingly unstable (t½<2 hr). We show that U6atac level depends on both RNA polymerases II and III and can be rapidly increased by cell stress-activated kinase p38MAPK, which stabilizes it, enhancing mRNA expression of hundreds of minor intron-containing genes that are otherwise suppressed by limiting U6atac. Furthermore, p38MAPK-dependent U6atac modulation can control minor intron-containing tumor suppressor PTEN expression and cytokine production. We propose that minor introns are embedded molecular switches regulated by U6atac abundance, providing a novel post-transcriptional gene expression mechanism and a rationale for the minor spliceosome’s evolutionary conservation.
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Funders
4
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
10.13039/100000011
Region: Americas
pri (Research institutes and centers)
Labels
2
- Howard Hughes Medical Institute Inc
- HHMI
Association Française Contre les Myopathies
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
10.13039/100000011
Region: Americas
pri (Research institutes and centers)
Labels
2
- Howard Hughes Medical Institute Inc
- HHMI
Association Française Contre les Myopathies
@article{Younis_2013, title={Minor introns are embedded molecular switches regulated by highly unstable U6atac snRNA}, volume={2}, ISSN={2050-084X}, url={http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/elife.00780}, DOI={10.7554/elife.00780}, journal={eLife}, publisher={eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd}, author={Younis, Ihab and Dittmar, Kimberly and Wang, Wei and Foley, Shawn W and Berg, Michael G and Hu, Karen Y and Wei, Zhi and Wan, Lili and Dreyfuss, Gideon}, year={2013}, month=jul }