Regulation of alternative splicing by the ATP-dependent DEAD-box RNA helicase p72

Although a number of ATP-dependent RNA helicases are important for constitutive RNA splicing, no helicases have been implicated in alternative RNA splicing. Here, we show that the abundant DEAD-box RNA helicase p72, but not its close relative p68, affects the splicing of alternative exons containing AC-rich exon enhancer elements. The effect of p72 was tested by using mini-genes that undergo different types of alternative splicing. When the concentration of p72 was increased in transient transfections, the inclusion of enhancer-containing CD44 alternative exons v4 and v5 increased using a mini-gene that contained these exons and their flanking introns inserted into a beta-globin gene. Other types of alternative splicing were not impacted by altering p72 concentrations. Mutation of the p72 helicase ATP-binding site or deletion of the carboxy-terminal region of the protein reduced the ability of the transfected protein to affect CD44 variable exon splicing. Use of in vitro extracts overexpressing p72 indicated that p72 becomes associated with complexes containing precursor RNA. Helicases have been implicated both in altering RNA-RNA interactions and in remodeling RNA-protein complexes. CD44 exon v4 contains a potential internal secondary structure element that base pairs the 5' splice site with a region inside the exon located between enhancer elements. Mutations that destroyed this complementarity modestly increased inclusion in the absence of p72 but still responded to increasing p72 concentration like the wild-type exon, suggesting that p72 might have effects on protein-RNA interactions. In agreement with this hypothesis, p72 was not able to restore the inclusion of an exon mutated for its major enhancer element. Our results suggest that RNA helicases may be important alternative splicing regulatory factors.