Regulation of human telomerase splicing by RNA:RNA pairing

Mandy S. Wong, Jerry W. Shay and Woodring E. Wright ()
Additional contact information
Mandy S. Wong: UT Southwestern Medical Center, 5323 Harry Hines Boulevard
Jerry W. Shay: UT Southwestern Medical Center, 5323 Harry Hines Boulevard
Woodring E. Wright: UT Southwestern Medical Center, 5323 Harry Hines Boulevard

Nature Communications, 2014, vol. 5, issue 1, 1-6

Abstract: Abstract Telomerase adds telomeric repeats onto chromosome ends and is almost universally upregulated in human cancers. Here we demonstrate that RNA:RNA pairing regulates splicing of the catalytic subunit of human telomerase (TERT). Human alleles contain a variable number of 38 bp repeats within TERT intron 6 (>1 kb from exon–intron junctions). At least nine repeats are required for generating the major non-functional ‘minus beta’ isoform, which skips exons 7 and 8. RNA:RNA pairing between the repeats and the pre-mRNA might bring exons 6 and 9 closer, thereby promoting exon skipping. To demonstrate this, we show that mutations within the repeat that abolish exon skipping are corrected by compensatory mutations in the pre-mRNA. This study thus identifies RNA:RNA pairing by repetitive sequences as a novel form of alternative splicing regulation in a gene crucial for cancer survival and sheds new light on functional roles for short repetitive sequences embedded deep within introns throughout the genome.

Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms4306 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:5:y:2014:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms4306

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms4306

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().