Regulation of alternative splicing by the core spliceosomal machinery

Abstract: Alternative splicing (AS) plays a major role in the generation of proteomic diversity and in gene regulation. However, the role of the basal splicing machinery in regulating AS remains poorly understood. Here we show that the core snRNP protein SmB/B’ self-regulates its expression by promoting the inclusion of a highly-conserved alternative exon in its own pre-mRNA that targets the spliced transcript for nonsense-mediated mRNA decay (NMD). Depletion of SmB/B’ in human cells results in reduced levels of snRNPs and in a striking reduction in the inclusion levels of hundreds of alternative exons, with comparatively few effects on constitutive exon splicing levels. The affected alternative exons are enriched in genes encoding RNA processing and other RNA binding factors, and a subset of these exons also regulate gene expression by activating NMD. Our results thus demonstrate a role for the core spliceosomal machinery in controlling an exon network that appears to modulate the levels of many RNA processing factors. Overall design: HeLa cells were transfected with a control non-targeting siRNA pool (siNT), or with siRNA pools designed to knockdown SmB/B'' or SRSF1 (also known as SF2/ASF/SFRS1). Sequence reads were aligned to exon-exon junction sequences in a database of EST/cDNA-mined cassette-type alternative splicing events. Processed data files (.bed and .txt) provided as supplementary files on the Series record. Processed data file build information: hg18.

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Saltzman AL, Pan Q, Blencowe BJ