TY - JOUR
T1 - Arabidopsis RNA processing factor SERRATE regulates the transcription of intronless genes
AU - Speth, Corinna
AU - Szabo, Emese Xochitl
AU - Martinho, Claudia
AU - Collani, Silvio
AU - zur Oven-Krockhaus, Sven
AU - Richter, Sandra
AU - Droste-Borel, Irina
AU - Macek, Boris
AU - Stierhof, York-Dieter
AU - Schmid, Markus
AU - Liu, Chang
AU - Laubinger, Sascha
N1 - Copyright
© 2018, Speth et al.
PY - 2018/9/12
Y1 - 2018/9/12
N2 - Intron splicing increases proteome complexity, promotes RNA stability, and enhances transcription. However, introns and the concomitant need for splicing extend the time required for gene expression and can cause an undesirable delay in the activation of genes. Here, we show that the plant microRNA processing factor SERRATE (SE) plays an unexpected and pivotal role in the regulation of intronless genes. Arabidopsis SE associated with more than 1000, mainly intronless, genes in a transcription-dependent manner. Chromatin-bound SE liaised with paused and elongating polymerase II complexes and promoted their association with intronless target genes. Our results indicate that stress-responsive genes contain no or few introns, which negatively affects their expression strength, but that some genes circumvent this limitation via a novel SE-dependent transcriptional activation mechanism. Transcriptome analysis of a Drosophila mutant defective in ARS2, the metazoan homologue of SE, suggests that SE/ARS2 function in regulating intronless genes might be conserved across kingdoms.
AB - Intron splicing increases proteome complexity, promotes RNA stability, and enhances transcription. However, introns and the concomitant need for splicing extend the time required for gene expression and can cause an undesirable delay in the activation of genes. Here, we show that the plant microRNA processing factor SERRATE (SE) plays an unexpected and pivotal role in the regulation of intronless genes. Arabidopsis SE associated with more than 1000, mainly intronless, genes in a transcription-dependent manner. Chromatin-bound SE liaised with paused and elongating polymerase II complexes and promoted their association with intronless target genes. Our results indicate that stress-responsive genes contain no or few introns, which negatively affects their expression strength, but that some genes circumvent this limitation via a novel SE-dependent transcriptional activation mechanism. Transcriptome analysis of a Drosophila mutant defective in ARS2, the metazoan homologue of SE, suggests that SE/ARS2 function in regulating intronless genes might be conserved across kingdoms.
UR - https://www.scopus.com/record/display.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85053881159&origin=inward
U2 - 10.7554/elife.37078
DO - 10.7554/elife.37078
M3 - Article
SN - 2050-084X
VL - 7
JO - eLife
JF - eLife
M1 - e37078
ER -