Alternative splicing regulation at tandem 3' splice sites

Alternative splicing (AS) constitutes a major mechanism creating protein diversity in humans. Previous bioinformatics studies based on expressed sequence tag and mRNA data have identified many AS events that are conserved between humans and mice. Of these events, ~25% are related to alternative choices of 3′ and 5′ splice sites. Surprisingly, half of all these events involve 3′ splice sites that are exactly 3 nt apart. These tandem 3′ splice sites result from the presence of the NAGNAG motif at the acceptor splice site, recently reported to be widely spread in the human genome. Although the NAGNAG motif is common in human genes, only a small subset of sites with this motif is confirmed to be involved in AS. We examined the NAGNAG motifs and observed specific features such as high sequence conservation of the motif, high conservation of ~30 bp at the intronic regions flanking the 3′ splice site and overabundance of cis-regulatory elements, which are characteristic of alternatively spliced tandem acceptor sites and can distinguish them from the constitutive sites in which the proximal NAG splice site is selected. Our findings imply that AS at tandem splice sites and constitutive splicing of the distal NAG are highly regulated.     

Intronic alternative splicing regulators identified by comparative genomics in nematodes

Many alternative splicing events are regulated by pentameric and hexameric intronic sequences that serve as binding sites for splicing regulatory factors. We hypothesized that intronic elements that regulate alternative splicing are under selective pressure for evolutionary conservation. Using a Wobble Aware Bulk Aligner genomic alignment of Caenorhabditis elegans and Caenorhabditis briggsae, we identified 147 alternatively spliced cassette exons that exhibit short regions of high nucleotide conservation in the introns flanking the alternative exon. In vivo experiments on the alternatively spliced let-2 gene confirm that these conserved regions can be important for alternative splicing regulation. Conserved intronic element sequences were collected into a dataset and the occurrence of each pentamer and hexamer motif was counted. We compared the frequency of pentamers and hexamers in the conserved intronic elements to a dataset of all C. elegans intron sequences in order to identify short intronic motifs that are more likely to be associated with alternative splicing. High-scoring motifs were examined for upstream or downstream preferences in introns surrounding alternative exons. Many of the high- scoring nematode pentamer and hexamer motifs correspond to known mammalian splicing regulatory sequences, such as (T)GCATG, indicating that the mechanism of alternative splicing regulation is well conserved in metazoans. A comparison of the analysis of the conserved intronic elements, and analysis of the entire introns flanking these same exons, reveals that focusing on intronic conservation can increase the sensitivity of detecting putative splicing regulatory motifs. This approach also identified novel sequences whose role in splicing is under investigation and has allowed us to take a step forward in defining a catalog of splicing regulatory elements for an organism. In vivo experiments confirm that one novel high-scoring sequence from our analysis, (T)CTATC, is important for alternative splicing regulation of the unc-52 gene.     

The emergence of alternative 3' and 5' splice site exons from constitutive exons

Alternative 3' and 5' splice site (ss) events constitute a significant part of all alternative splicing events. These events were also found to be related to several aberrant splicing diseases. However, only few of the characteristics that distinguish these events from alternative cassette exons are known currently. In this study, we compared the characteristics of constitutive exons, alternative cassette exons, and alternative 3'ss and 5'ss exons. The results revealed that alternative 3'ss and 5'ss exons are an intermediate state between constitutive and alternative cassette exons, where the constitutive side resembles constitutive exons, and the alternative side resembles alternative cassette exons. The results also show that alternative 3'ss and 5'ss exons exhibit low levels of symmetry (frame-preserving), similar to constitutive exons, whereas the sequence between the two alternative splice sites shows high symmetry levels, similar to alternative cassette exons. In addition, flanking intronic conservation analysis revealed that exons whose alternative splice sites are at least nine nucleotides apart show a high conservation level, indicating intronic participation in the regulation of their splicing, whereas exons whose alternative splice sites are fewer than nine nucleotides apart show a low conservation level. Further examination of these exons, spanning seven vertebrate species, suggests an evolutionary model in which the alternative state is a derivative of an ancestral constitutive exon, where a mutation inside the exon or along the flanking intron resulted in the creation of a new splice site that competes with the original one, leading to alternative splice site selection. This model was validated experimentally on four exons, showing that they indeed originated from constitutive exons that acquired a new competing splice site during evolution.     

The genomic signature of splicing-coupled selection differs between long and short introns

Understanding the function of noncoding regions in the genome, such as introns, is of central importance to evolutionary biology. One approach is to assay for the targets of natural selection. On one hand, the sequence of introns, especially short introns, appears to evolve in an almost neutral manner. Whereas on the other hand, a large proportion of intronic sequence is under selective constraint. This discrepancy is largely dependent on intron length and differences in the methods used to infer selection. We have used a method based on DNA strand asymmetery that does not require comparison with any putatively neutrally evolving sequence, nor sequence conservation between species, to detect selection within introns. The strongest signal we identify is associated with short introns. This signal comes from a family of motifs that could act as cryptic 5' splice sites during mRNA processing, suggesting a mechanistic justification underlying this signal of selection. Together with an analysis of intron length and splice site strength, we observe that the genomic signature of splicing-coupled selection differs between long and short introns.     

Selection against tandem splice sites affecting structured protein regions

Background  

Alternative selection of splice sites in tandem donors and acceptors is a major mode of alternative splicing. Here, we analyzed whether in-frame tandem sites leading to subtle mRNA insertions/deletions of 3, 6, or 9 nucleotides are under natural selection.     

The Emergence of Alternative 3′ and 5′ Splice Site Exons from Constitutive Exons

Alternative 3′ and 5′ splice site (ss) events constitute a significant part of all alternative splicing events. These events were also found to be related to several aberrant splicing diseases. However, only few of the characteristics that distinguish these events from alternative cassette exons are known currently. In this study, we compared the characteristics of constitutive exons, alternative cassette exons, and alternative 3′ss and 5′ss exons. The results revealed that alternative 3′ss and 5′ss exons are an intermediate state between constitutive and alternative cassette exons, where the constitutive side resembles constitutive exons, and the alternative side resembles alternative cassette exons. The results also show that alternative 3′ss and 5′ss exons exhibit low levels of symmetry (frame-preserving), similar to constitutive exons, whereas the sequence between the two alternative splice sites shows high symmetry levels, similar to alternative cassette exons. In addition, flanking intronic conservation analysis revealed that exons whose alternative splice sites are at least nine nucleotides apart show a high conservation level, indicating intronic participation in the regulation of their splicing, whereas exons whose alternative splice sites are fewer than nine nucleotides apart show a low conservation level. Further examination of these exons, spanning seven vertebrate species, suggests an evolutionary model in which the alternative state is a derivative of an ancestral constitutive exon, where a mutation inside the exon or along the flanking intron resulted in the creation of a new splice site that competes with the original one, leading to alternative splice site selection. This model was validated experimentally on four exons, showing that they indeed originated from constitutive exons that acquired a new competing splice site during evolution.     

Overlapping alternative donor splice sites in the human genome

Over 50% of donor splice sites in the human genome have a potential alternative donor site at a distance of three to six nucleotides. Conservation of these potential sites is determined by the consensus requirements and by its exonic or intronic location. Several hundred pairs of overlapping sites are confirmed to be alternatively spliced as both sites in a pair are supported by a protein, by a full-length mRNA, or by expressed sequence tags (ESTs) from at least two independent clone libraries. Overlapping sites may clash with consensus requirements. Pairs with a site shift of four nucleotides are the most abundant, despite the frameshift in the protein-coding region that they introduce. The site usage in pairs is usually uneven, and the major site is more frequently conserved in other mammalian genomes. Overlapping alternative donor sites and acceptor sites may have different functional roles: alternative splicing of overlapping acceptor sites leads mainly to microvariations in protein sequences; whereas alternative donor sites often lead to frameshifts and thus either yield major differences in the protein sequence and structure, or generate nonsense-mediated decay-inducing mRNA isoforms likely involved in regulated unproductive splicing pathways.     

Does distance matter? Variations in alternative 3′ splicing regulation

Alternative splicing constitutes a major mechanism creating protein diversity in humans. This diversity can result from the alternative skipping of entire exons or by alternative selection of the 5′ or 3′ splice sites that define the exon boundaries. In this study, we analyze the sequence and evolutionary characteristics of alternative 3′ splice sites conserved between human and mouse genomes for distances ranging from 3 to 100 nucleotides. We show that alternative splicing events can be distinguished from constitutive splicing by a combination of properties which vary depending on the distance between the splice sites. Among the unique features of alternative 3′ splice sites, we observed an unexpectedly high occurrence of events in which a polypyrimidine tract was found to overlap the upstream splice site. By applying a machine-learning approach, we show that we can successfully discriminate true alternative 3′ splice sites from constitutive 3′ splice sites. Finally, we propose that the unique features of the intron flanking alternative splice sites are indicative of a regulatory mechanism that is involved in splice site selection. We postulate that the process of splice site selection is influenced by the distance between the competitive splice sites.     

VERSE: a varying effect regression for splicing elements discovery

Identification of splicing regulatory elements (SREs) deserves special attention because these cis-acting short sequences are vital parts of splicing code. The fact that a variety of other biological signals cooperatively govern the splicing pattern indicates the necessity of developing novel tools to incorporate information from multiple sources to improve splicing factor binding sites prediction. Under this context, we proposed a Varying Effect Regression for Splicing Elements (VERSE) to discover intronic SREs in the proximity of exon junctions by integrating other biological features. As a result, 1562 intronic SREs were identified in 16 human tissues, many of which overlapped with experimentally verified binding motifs for several well-known splicing factors, including FOX-1, PTB, hnRNP A/B, hnRNP F/H, and so on. The discovered tissue, region, and conservation preferences of the putative motifs demonstrate that splice site selection is a complicated process that needs subtle and delicate regulation. VERSE may serve as a powerful tool to not only discover SREs by incorporating additional informative signals but also precisely quantify their varying contribution under different biological contexts.     

Combinatorial control of exon recognition

Pre-mRNA splicing is a fundamental process required for the expression of most metazoan genes. It is carried out by the spliceosome, which catalyzes the removal of noncoding intronic sequences to assemble exons into mature mRNAs prior to export and translation. Given the complexity of higher eukaryotic genes and the relatively low level of splice site conservation, the precision of the splicing machinery in recognizing and pairing splice sites is impressive. Introns ranging in size from <100 up to 100,000 bases are removed efficiently. At the same time, a large number of alternative splicing events are observed between different cell types, during development, or during other biological processes. This extensive alternative splicing implies a significant flexibility of the spliceosome to identify and process exons within a given pre-mRNA. To reach this flexibility, splice site selection in higher eukaryotes has evolved to depend on multiple parameters such as splice site strength, the presence or absence of splicing regulators, RNA secondary structures, the exon/intron architecture, and the process of pre-mRNA synthesis itself. The relative contributions of each of these parameters control how efficiently splice sites are recognized and flanking introns are removed.     

Interdependent MHC-DRB exon-plus-intron evolution in artiodactyls

Exon 2 sequences of an expressed MHC-DRB locus from sheep were examined for polymorphisms in both the antigen-binding regions and the adjacent intronic mixed simple tandem repeat. Twenty-one novel exon 2 Ovar-DRB alleles were identified. Short nucleotide motifs are extensively shared between certain exon 2 regions of Ovar-DRB alleles. The simple repeat variations, the number of different amino acids at usually polymorphic sites, and the number of silent substitutions were reduced in the intraspecies analyses of sheep DRB sequences, compared with those of cattle and goats. It was paradoxical that the abundance of different sheep alleles was similar to that of cattle and goats. This paradox may be explained by postulating a relatively small number of "ancient" alleles, with the present-day Ovar-DRB alleles being generated by reciprocal exchange of nucleotide motifs. At the antigen-binding sites, new combinations of amino acids were maintained in Ovar-DRB alleles by strong positive selection. In sheep--and less pronounced in goats and cattle--the DRB alleles can be divided into two groups. In one group, silent substitutions are increased when compared with the other. This suggests separate evolutionary pathways for certain groups of DRB alleles within a species. The simple repetitive sequences are also discussed with respect to the evolution of DRB alleles.      

Noisy splicing drives mRNA isoform diversity in human cells

While the majority of multiexonic human genes show some evidence of alternative splicing, it is unclear what fraction of observed splice forms is functionally relevant. In this study, we examine the extent of alternative splicing in human cells using deep RNA sequencing and de novo identification of splice junctions. We demonstrate the existence of a large class of low abundance isoforms, encompassing approximately 150,000 previously unannotated splice junctions in our data. Newly-identified splice sites show little evidence of evolutionary conservation, suggesting that the majority are due to erroneous splice site choice. We show that sequence motifs involved in the recognition of exons are enriched in the vicinity of unconserved splice sites. We estimate that the average intron has a splicing error rate of approximately 0.7% and show that introns in highly expressed genes are spliced more accurately, likely due to their shorter length. These results implicate noisy splicing as an important property of genome evolution.     

Multisite and bidirectional exonic splicing enhancer in CD44 alternative exon v3

The human CD44 gene encodes multiple isoforms of a transmembrane protein that differ in their extracellular domains as a result of alternative splicing of its variable exons. Expression of CD44 is tightly regulated according to the type and physiological status of a cell, with expression of high molecular weight isoforms by inclusion of variable exons and low molecular weight isoforms containing few or no variable exons. Human CD44 variable exon 3 (v3) can follow a specific alternative splicing route different from that affecting other variable exons. Here we map and functionally describe the splicing enhancer element within CD44 exon v3 which regulates its inclusion in the final mRNA. The v3 splicing enhancer is a multisite bipartite element consisting of a tandem nonamer, the XX motif, and an heptamer, the Y motif, located centrally in the exon. Each of the three sites of this multisite enhancer partially retains its splicing enhancing capacity independently from each other in CD44 and shows full enhancing function in gene contexts different from CD44. We further demonstrate that these motifs act cooperatively as at least two motifs are needed to maintain exon inclusion. Their action is differential with respect to the splice-site target abutting v3. The first X motif acts on the 3' splice site, the second X motif acts on both splice sites (as a bidirectional exonic splicing enhancer), and the Y motif acts on the 5' splice site. We also show that the multisite v3 splicing enhancer is functional irrespective of flanking intron length and spatial organization within v3.