Distinct Mechanisms of Splicing Regulation in vivo by the Drosophila Protein Sex-Lethal

The protein Sex-lethal (SXL) controls pre-mRNA splicing of two genes involved in Drosophila sex determination: transformer (tra) and the Sxl gene itself. Previous in vitro results indicated that SXL antagonizes the general splicing factor U2AF65to regulate splicing of tra. In this report, we have us...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS 1997-07, Vol.94 (14), p.7343-7348
Main Authors: Granadino, Begona, Luiz O. F. Penalva, Green, Michael R., Valcarcel, Juan, Sanchez, Lucas
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Alternative splicing
Animals
Biological Sciences
Cellular biology
Drosophila
Drosophila - genetics
Drosophila Proteins
Exons
Gene expression regulation
Genes, Insect
Genetics
Insect Hormones - genetics
Insects
Plasmids
Polymerase chain reaction
Proteins
RNA
RNA Splicing
RNA, Messenger - genetics
RNA-Binding Proteins - genetics
Sex chromosomes
Splicing
Transgenes
Viability
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Summary:The protein Sex-lethal (SXL) controls pre-mRNA splicing of two genes involved in Drosophila sex determination: transformer (tra) and the Sxl gene itself. Previous in vitro results indicated that SXL antagonizes the general splicing factor U2AF65to regulate splicing of tra. In this report, we have used transgenic flies expressing chimeric proteins between SXL and the effector domain of U2AF65to study the mechanisms of splicing regulation by SXL in vivo. Conferring U2AF activity to SXL relieves its inhibitory activity on tra splicing but not on Sxl splicing. Therefore, antagonizing U2AF65can explain tra splicing regulation both in vitro and in vivo, but this mechanism cannot explain splicing regulation of Sxl pre-mRNA. These results are a direct proof that Sxl, the master regulatory gene in sex determination, has multiple and separable activities in the regulation of pre-mRNA splicing.
ISSN:0027-8424
1091-6490
DOI:10.1073/pnas.94.14.7343