Strategies for identifying RNA splicing regulatory motifs and predicting alternative splicing events

The leader RNA of SARS-CoV-2 sequesters polypyrimidine tract binding protein (PTBP1) and influences pre-mRNA splicing in infected cells

The large amount of viral RNA produced during infections has the potential to interact with and effectively sequester cellular RNA binding proteins, thereby influencing aspects of post-transcriptional gene regulation in the infected cell. Here we demonstrate that the abundant 5' leader RNA region of SARS-CoV-2 viral RNAs can interact with the cellular polypyrimidine tract binding protein (PTBP1). Interestingly, the effect of a knockdown of PTBP1 protein on cellular gene expression is also mimicked during SARS-CoV-2 infection, suggesting that this protein may be functionally sequestered by viral RNAs. Consistent with this model, the alternative splicing of mRNAs that is normally controlled by PTBP1 is dysregulated during SARS-CoV-2 infection. Collectively, these data suggest that the SARS-CoV-2 leader RNA sequesters the cellular PTBP1 protein during infection, resulting in significant impacts on the RNA biology of the host cell. These alterations in post-transcriptional gene regulation may play a role in SARS-CoV-2 mediated molecular pathogenesis.

Genome-wide identification of associations between enhancer and alternative splicing in human and mouse

Background

Alternative splicing (AS) increases the diversity of transcriptome and could fine-tune the function of genes, so that understanding the regulation of AS is vital. AS could be regulated by many different cis-regulatory elements, such as enhancer. Enhancer has been experimentally proved to regulate AS in some genes. However, there is a lack of genome-wide studies on the association between enhancer and AS (enhancer-AS association). To bridge the gap, here we developed an integrative analysis on a genome-wide scale to identify enhancer-AS associations in human and mouse.

Result

We collected enhancer datasets which include 28 human and 24 mouse tissues and cell lines, and RNA-seq datasets which are paired with the selected tissues. Combining with data integration and statistical analysis, we identified 3,242 human and 7,716 mouse genes which have significant enhancer-AS associations in at least one tissue. On average, for each gene, about 6% of enhancers in human (5% in mouse) are associated to AS change and for each enhancer, approximately one gene is identified to have enhancer-AS association in both human and mouse. We found that 52% of the human significant (34% in mouse) enhancer-AS associations are the co-existence of homologous genes and homologous enhancers. We further constructed a user-friendly platform, named Visualization of Enhancer-associated Alternative Splicing (VEnAS, http://venas.iis.sinica.edu.tw/), to provide genomic architecture, intuitive association plot, and contingency table of the significant enhancer-AS associations.

Conclusion

This study provides the first genome-wide identification of enhancer-AS associations in human and mouse. The results suggest that a notable portion of enhancers are playing roles in AS regulations. The analyzed results and the proposed platform VEnAS would provide a further understanding of enhancers on regulating alternative splicing.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12864-022-08537-1.

Introns: Good Day Junk Is Bad Day Treasure

Introns are ubiquitous in eukaryotic transcripts. They are often viewed as junk RNA but the huge energetic burden of transcribing, removing, and degrading them suggests a significant evolutionary advantage. Ostensibly, an intron functions within the host pre-mRNA to regulate its splicing, transport, and degradation. However, recent studies have revealed an entirely new class of trans-acting functions where the presence of intronic RNA in the cell impacts the expression of other genes in trans. Here, we review possible new mechanisms of intron functions, with a focus on the role of yeast introns in regulating the cell growth response to starvation.

A Standardized DNA Variant Scoring System for Pathogenicity Assessments in Mendelian Disorders

We developed a rules‐based scoring system to classify DNA variants into five categories including pathogenic, likely pathogenic, variant of uncertain significance (VUS), likely benign, and benign. Over 16,500 pathogenicity assessments on 11,894 variants from 338 genes were analyzed for pathogenicity based on prediction tools, population frequency, co‐occurrence, segregation, and functional studies collected from internal and external sources. Scores were calculated by trained scientists using a quantitative framework that assigned differential weighting to these five types of data. We performed descriptive and comparative statistics on the dataset and tested interobserver concordance among the trained scientists. Private variants defined as variants found within single families (n = 5,182), were either VUS (80.5%; n = 4,169) or likely pathogenic (19.5%; n = 1,013). The remaining variants (n = 6,712) were VUS (38.4%; n = 2,577) or likely benign/benign (34.7%; n = 2,327) or likely pathogenic/pathogenic (26.9%, n = 1,808). Exact agreement between the trained scientists on the final variant score was 98.5% [95% confidence interval (CI) (98.0, 98.9)] with an interobserver consistency of 97% [95% CI (91.5, 99.4)]. Variant scores were stable and showed increasing odds of being in agreement with new data when re‐evaluated periodically. This carefully curated, standardized variant pathogenicity scoring system provides reliable pathogenicity scores for DNA variants encountered in a clinical laboratory setting.

Genetic characterization of interleukins (IL-1α, IL-1β, IL-2, IL-4, IL-8, IL-10, IL-12A, IL-12B, IL-15 and IL-18) with relevant biological roles in lagomorphs

ILs, as essential innate immune modulators, are involved in an array of biological processes. In the European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) IL-1α, IL-1β, IL-2, IL-4, IL-8, IL-10, IL-12A, IL-12B, IL-15 and IL-18 have been implicated in inflammatory processes and in the immune response against rabbit hemorrhagic disease virus and myxoma virus infections. In this study we characterized these ILs in six Lagomorpha species (European rabbit, pygmy rabbit, two cottontail rabbit species, European brown hare and American pika). Overall, these ILs are conserved between lagomorphs, including in their exon/intron structure. Most differences were observed between leporids and American pika. Indeed, when comparing both, some relevant differences were observed in American pika, such as the location of the stop codon in IL-1α and IL-2, the existence of a different transcript in IL8 and the number of cysteine residues in IL-1β. Changes at N-glycosylation motifs were also detected in IL-1, IL-10, IL-12B and IL-15. IL-1α is the protein that presents the highest evolutionary distances, which is in contrast to IL-12A where the distances between lagomorphs are the lowest. For all these ILs, sequences of human and European rabbit are more closely related than between human and mouse or European rabbit and mouse.

Splicing factor SRSF1 negatively regulates alternative splicing of MDM2 under damage

Genotoxic stress induces alternative splicing of the oncogene MDM2 generating MDM2-ALT1, an isoform attributed with tumorigenic properties. However, the mechanisms underlying this event remain unclear. Here we explore MDM2 splicing regulation by utilizing a novel minigene that mimics endogenous MDM2 splicing in response to UV and cisplatinum-induced DNA damage. We report that exon 11 is necessary and sufficient for the damage-specific alternative splicing of the MDM2 minigene and that the splicing factor SRSF1 binds exon 11 at evolutionarily conserved sites. Interestingly, mutations disrupting this interaction proved sufficient to abolish the stress-induced alternative splicing of the MDM2 minigene. Furthermore, SRSF1 overexpression promoted exclusion of exon 11, while its siRNA-mediated knockdown prevented the stress-induced alternative splicing of endogenous MDM2. Additionally, we observed elevated SRSF1 levels under stress and in tumors correlating with the expression of MDM2-ALT1. Notably, we demonstrate that MDM2-ALT1 splicing can be blocked by targeting SRSF1 sites on exon 11 using antisense oligonucleotides. These results present conclusive evidence supporting a negative role for SRSF1 in MDM2 alternative splicing. Importantly, we define for the first time, a clear-cut mechanism for the regulation of damage-induced MDM2 splicing and present potential strategies for manipulating MDM2 expression via splicing modulation.

Identification of human patatin-like phospholipase domain-containing protein 1 and a mutant in human cervical cancer HeLa cells

Recently members of mammalian patatin-like phospholipase domain containing (PNPLA) protein family have attracted attention for their critical roles in diverse aspects of lipid metabolism and signal pathway. Until now little has been known about the characteristics of PNPLA1. Here, the full length coding cDNA sequence of human PNPLA1 (hPNPLA1) was cloned for the first time, which encoded a polypeptide with 532 amino acids containing the whole patatin domain. Tissue expression profiles analysis showed that low mRNA levels of hPNPLA1 existed in various tissues, except high expression in the digestive system, bone marrow and spleen. Subcellular distribution of hPNPLA1 tagged with green fluorescence protein mainly localized to lipid droplets. Furthermore, a nonsense mutation of PNPLA1 in human cervical cancer HeLa cells was identified. The hPNPLA1 mutant encoded a protein of 412 amino acids without the C-terminal domain and did not colocalize to lipid droplets, which suggested that the C-terminal region of hPNPLA1 affected lipid droplet binding. These results identified hPNPLA1 and a mutant in HeLa cells, and provided insights into the structure and function of PNPLA1.

Introduction to genome biology: features, processes, and structures

Genomic analyses increasingly make use of sophisticated statistical and computational approaches in investigations of genomic function and evolution. Scientists implementing and developing these approaches are often computational scientists, physicists, or mathematicians. This article aims to provide a compact overview of genome biology for these scientists. Thus, the article focuses on providing biological context to the genomic features, processes, and structures analysed by these approaches. Topics covered include (1) differences between eukaryotic and prokaryotic cells; (2) the physical structure of genomes and chromatin; (3) different categories of genomic regions, including those serving as templates for RNA and protein synthesis, regulatory regions, repetitive regions, and "architectural" or "organisational" regions, such as centromeres and telomeres; (4) the cell cycle; (5) an overview of transcription, translation, and protein structure; and (6) a glossary of relevant terms.

Tailoring of membrane proteins by alternative splicing of pre-mRNA

Alternative splicing (AS) of RNA is a key mechanism for diversification of the eukaryotic proteome. In this process, different mRNA transcripts can be produced through altered excision and/or inclusion of exons during processing of the pre-mRNA molecule. Since its discovery, AS has been shown to play roles in protein structure, function, and localization. Dysregulation of this process can result in disease phenotypes. Moreover, AS pathways are promising therapeutic targets for a number of diseases. Integral membrane proteins (MPs) represent a class of proteins that may be particularly amenable to regulation by alternative splicing because of the distinctive topological restraints associated with their folding, structure, trafficking, and function. Here, we review the impact of AS on MP form and function and the roles of AS in MP-related disorders such as Alzheimer's disease.

Identification of two novel splicing variants of murine NTE-related esterase

NTE-related esterase (NRE) is an insulin-regulated lysophospholipase with homology to neuropathy target esterase (NTE), which plays a role in energy metabolism. Here, we reported two alternative splicing variants of the murine NRE (mNRE) gene, termed mNREV1 and mNREV2. Genomic organization analysis indicated that 5' splice site of mNRE intron 33 was changed in both mNREV1 and mNREV2, and mNRE exon 21 was deleted in mNREV2. mNREV1 had the same protein domains with mNRE, while mNREV2 lacked the patatin domain in the C-terminal catalytic region. Green fluorescent protein-mNREV1 or mNREV2 fusion proteins localized to the endoplasmic reticulum. mNREV1 and mNRE exhibited equal hydrolytic activity to the substrate phenyl valerate, whereas mNREV2 did not have any catalytic activity. The expression profiles of mNRE and its splicing isoforms in white adipose tissue, cardiac muscle, skeletal muscle, and testis tissues were further analyzed by real time quantitative-PCR in fed and fasted states, which indicated that the major isoform of mNRE mRNA generated switched from mNREV2 to mNREV1 during fasting. Thus there was a nutritional regulation of mNRE expression at the mRNA levels via alternative splicing.

SpliceDisease database: linking RNA splicing and disease

RNA splicing is an important aspect of gene regulation in many organisms. Splicing of RNA is regulated by complicated mechanisms involving numerous RNA-binding proteins and the intricate network of interactions among them. Mutations in cis-acting splicing elements or its regulatory proteins have been shown to be involved in human diseases. Defects in pre-mRNA splicing process have emerged as a common disease-causing mechanism. Therefore, a database integrating RNA splicing and disease associations would be helpful for understanding not only the RNA splicing but also its contribution to disease. In SpliceDisease database, we manually curated 2337 splicing mutation disease entries involving 303 genes and 370 diseases, which have been supported experimentally in 898 publications. The SpliceDisease database provides information including the change of the nucleotide in the sequence, the location of the mutation on the gene, the reference Pubmed ID and detailed description for the relationship among gene mutations, splicing defects and diseases. We standardized the names of the diseases and genes and provided links for these genes to NCBI and UCSC genome browser for further annotation and genomic sequences. For the location of the mutation, we give direct links of the entry to the respective position/region in the genome browser. The users can freely browse, search and download the data in SpliceDisease at http://cmbi.bjmu.edu.cn/sdisease.

Computational identification of tissue-specific alternative splicing elements in mouse genes from RNA-Seq

Tissue-specific alternative splicing is a key mechanism for generating tissue-specific proteomic diversity in eukaryotes. Splicing regulatory elements (SREs) in pre-mature messenger RNA play a very important role in regulating alternative splicing. In this article, we use mouse RNA-Seq data to determine a positive data set where SREs are over-represented and a reliable negative data set where the same SREs are most likely under-represented for a specific tissue and then employ a powerful discriminative approach to identify SREs. We identified 456 putative splicing enhancers or silencers, of which 221 were predicted to be tissue-specific. Most of our tissue-specific SREs are likely different from constitutive SREs, since only 18% of our exonic splicing enhancers (ESEs) are contained in constitutive RESCUE-ESEs. A relatively small portion (20%) of our SREs is included in tissue-specific SREs in human identified in two recent studies. In the analysis of position distribution of SREs, we found that a dozen of SREs were biased to a specific region. We also identified two very interesting SREs that can function as an enhancer in one tissue but a silencer in another tissue from the same intronic region. These findings provide insight into the mechanism of tissue-specific alternative splicing and give a set of valuable putative SREs for further experimental investigations.

Finding alternative splicing patterns with strong support from expressed sequences on individual exons/introns

We consider the problem of predicting alternative splicing patterns from a set of expressed sequences (cDNAs and ESTs). Some of these expressed sequences may be errorous, thus forming incorrect exons/introns. These incorrect exons/introns may cause a lot of false positives. For example, we examined a popular alternative splicing database, ECgene, which predicts alternate splicing patterns from expressed sequences. The result shows that about 81.3%-81.6% (sensitivity) of known patterns are found, but the specificity can be as low as 5.9%. Based on the idea that errorous sequences are usually not consistent with other sequences, in this paper we provide an alternative approach for finding alternative splicing patterns which ensures that individual exons/introns of the reported patterns have enough support from the expressed sequences. On the same dataset, our approach can achieve a much higher specificity and a slight increase in sensitivity (38.9% and 84.9%, respectively). Our approach also gives better results compared with popular alternative splicing databases (ASD, ECgene, SpliceNest) and the software ClusterMerge.

Comparative analysis of sequence features involved in the recognition of tandem splice sites

Background

The splicing of pre-mRNAs is conspicuously often variable and produces multiple alternatively spliced (AS) isoforms that encode different messages from one gene locus. Computational studies uncovered a class of highly similar isoforms, which were related to tandem 5'-splice sites (5'ss) and 3'-splice sites (3'ss), yet with very sparse anecdotal evidence in experimental studies. To compare the types and levels of alternative tandem splice site exons occurring in different human organ systems and cell types, and to study known sequence features involved in the recognition and distinction of neighboring splice sites, we performed large-scale, stringent alignments of cDNA sequences and ESTs to the human and mouse genomes, followed by experimental validation.

Results

We analyzed alternative 5'ss exons (A5Es) and alternative 3'ss exons (A3Es), derived from transcript sequences that were aligned to assembled genome sequences to infer patterns of AS occurring in several thousands of genes. Comparing the levels of overlapping (tandem) and non-overlapping (competitive) A5Es and A3Es, a clear preference of isoforms was seen for tandem acceptors and donors, with four nucleotides and three to six nucleotides long exon extensions, respectively. A subset of inferred A5E tandem exons was selected and experimentally validated. With the focus on A5Es, we investigated their transcript coverage, sequence conservation and base-paring to U1 snRNA, proximal and distal splice site classification, candidate motifs for cis-regulatory activity, and compared A5Es with A3Es, constitutive and pseudo-exons, in H. sapiens and M. musculus. The results reveal a small but authentic enriched set of tandem splice site preference, with specific distances between proximal and distal 5'ss (3'ss), which showed a marked dichotomy between the levels of in- and out-of-frame splicing for A5Es and A3Es, respectively, identified a number of candidate NMD targets, and allowed a rough estimation of a number of undetected tandem donors based on splice site information.

Conclusion

This comparative study distinguishes tandem 5'ss and 3'ss, with three to six nucleotides long extensions, as having unusually high proportions of AS, experimentally validates tandem donors in a panel of different human tissues, highlights the dichotomy in the types of AS occurring at tandem splice sites, and elucidates that human alternative exons spliced at overlapping 5'ss posses features of typical splice variants that could well be beneficial for the cell.