Global impact of RNA polymerase II elongation inhibition on alternative splicing regulation (expression)

ABSTRACT: The rate of RNA polymerase II (pol II) elongation can influence splice site selection in nascent transcripts, yet the extent and physiological relevance of this kinetic coupling between transcription and alternative splicing is not well understood. We performed experiments to perturb pol II elongation and then globally compared alternative splicing patterns with genome-wide pol II occupancy. RNA binding and RNA processing functions were significantly enriched among the genes with pol II elongation inhibition-dependent changes in alternative splicing. Under conditions that interfere with pol II elongation, including cell stress, increased pol II occupancy was detected in the intronic regions flanking the alternative exons in these genes, and these exons generally became more included. A disproportionately high fraction of these exons introduced premature termination codons that elicited nonsense-mediated mRNA decay (NMD), thereby further reducing transcript levels. Our results provide evidence that kinetic coupling between transcription, alternative splicing and NMD affords a rapid mechanism by which cells can respond to changes in growth conditions, including cell stress, to coordinate the levels of RNA processing factors with mRNA levels. In order to identify alternative splicing events influenced by changes in pol II elongation, we performed quantitative alternative splicing microarray profiling (Pan et al., 2004 (PMID 15610736); Shai et al., 2006 (PMID 16403798)) of RNA isolated from stimulated Jurkat T lymphoma cells, cultured separately in the presence or absence of two different drugs that can inhibit pol II elongation: 5,6-dichloro-1-β-D-ribofuranosyl-benzimidazole (DRB) and camptothecin.

ORGANISM(S): Homo sapiens

SUBMITTER: Qun Pan 

PROVIDER: E-GEOD-25287 | biostudies-arrayexpress |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-arrayexpress