Splintrons in Giardia intestinalis

Abstract

The divergent eukaryotic unicellular organism Giardia intestinalis is an intestinal parasite in humans and various animals. An analysis of a draft genome sequence suggested that G. intestinalis has a much simpler genome organization and gene repertoire than those of other model eukaryotic organisms (e.g., Arabidopsis and human). This general picture of the G. intestinalis genome seemingly agrees with the fact that only four spliceosomal (cis-spliced) introns have been identified in this organism to date. We have recently shown that G. intestinalis possesses a unique gene expression system incorporating spliceosome-mediated trans-splicing. Some protein-coding genes in G. intestinalis are split into multiple pieces in the genome and each gene fragment is independently transcribed. Two particular pre-mRNAs directly interact with each other by forming an intermolecular-stem structure and are then trans-spliced into a mature mRNA by spliceosomes. We believe that this trans-splicing secondarily arose from the system that excises canonical (cis-splicing) introns. Based on these findings, we suspect that similar phenomena—split genes and post-transcriptional assemblage of their transcripts via trans-splicing—may be prevalent in more distinct eukaryotic lineages than previously known, particularly in organisms possessing ‘intron-poor’ genomes.