This Article Full Text (PDF) Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Reprints and Permissions Copyright Information Books from ASM Press MicrobeWorld Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Kennedy, C. F. Articles by Berget, S. M. Search for Related Content PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Kennedy, C. F. Articles by Berget, S. M.

 Previous Article  |  Next Article 

Mol. Cell. Biol., May 1997, 2774-2780, Vol 17, No. 5
Copyright © 1997, American Society for Microbiology

Pyrimidine tracts between the 5' splice site and branch point facilitate splicing and recognition of a small Drosophila intron

CF Kennedy and SM Berget
Verna and Marrs McLean Department of Biochemistry, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas 77030, USA.

The minimum size for splicing of a vertebrate intron is approximately 70 nucleotides. In Drosophila melanogaster, more than half of the introns are significantly below this minimum yet function well. Such short introns often lack the pyrimidine tract located between the branch point and 3' splice site common to metazoan introns. To investigate if small introns contain special sequences that facilitate their recognition, the sequences and factors required for the splicing of a 59-nucleotide intron from the D. melanogaster mle gene have been examined. This intron contains only a minimal region of interrupted pyrimidines downstream of the branch point. Instead, two longer, uninterrupted C-rich tracts are located between the 5' splice site and branch point. Both of these sequences are required for maximal in vivo and in vitro splicing. The upstream sequences are also required for maximal binding of factors to the 5' splice site, cross-linking of U2AF to precursor RNA, and assembly of the active spliceosome, suggesting that sequences upstream of the branch point influence events at both ends of the small mle intron. Thus, a very short intron lacking a classical pyrimidine tract between the branch point and 3' splice site requires accessory pyrimidine sequences in the short region between the 5' splice site and branch point.

This article has been cited by other articles:

• Halligan, D. L., Keightley, P. D. (2006). Ubiquitous selective constraints in the Drosophila genome revealed by a genome-wide interspecies comparison. Genome Res 16: 875-884 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Kupfer, D. M., Drabenstot, S. D., Buchanan, K. L., Lai, H., Zhu, H., Dyer, D. W., Roe, B. A., Murphy, J. W. (2004). Introns and Splicing Elements of Five Diverse Fungi. Eukaryot Cell 3: 1088-1100 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Zhang, X. H-F., Heller, K. A., Hefter, I., Leslie, C. S., Chasin, L. A. (2003). Sequence Information for the Splicing of Human Pre-mRNA Identified by Support Vector Machine Classification. Genome Res 13: 2637-2650 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Hodges, D., Cripps, R. M., O'Connor, M. E., Bernstein, S. I. (1999). The Role of Evolutionarily Conserved Sequences in Alternative Splicing at the 3' End of Drosophila melanogaster Myosin Heavy Chain RNA. Genetics 151: 263-276 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Kennedy, C. F., Krämer, A., Berget, S. M. (1998). A Role for SRp54 during Intron Bridging of Small Introns with Pyrimidine Tracts Upstream of the Branch Point. Mol. Cell. Biol. 18: 5425-5434 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Haut, D. D., Pintel, D. J. (1998). Intron Definition Is Required for Excision of the Minute Virus of Mice Small Intron and Definition of the Upstream Exon. J. Virol. 72: 1834-1843 [Abstract] [Full Text]