Abstract
As a co-transcriptional process, RNA processing, including alternative splicing and alternative polyadenylation, is crucial for the generation of multiple mRNA isoforms. RNA processing mechanisms are widespread across all higher eukaryotes and play critical roles in cell differentiation, organ development and disease response. Recently, significant progresses have been made in understanding the mechanism of RNA processing. RNA processing is regulated by trans-acting factors such as splicing factors, RNA-binding proteins and cis-sequences in pre-mRNA, and increasing evidence suggests that epigenetic mechanisms, which are important for the dynamic regulation and state of specific chromatic regions, are also involved in co-transcriptional RNA processing. In contrast, recent studies also suggest that alternative RNA processing also has a feedback regulation on epigenetic mechanisms. In this review, we discuss recent studies and summarize the current knowledge on the epigenetic regulation of alternative RNA processing. In addition, a feedback regulation of RNA processing on epigenetic regulators is also discussed.
Highlights
Messenger RNA production is a fantastically complex process in eukaryotes, including transcription of messenger RNA (mRNA) precursors followed by capping, splicing, and polyadenylation
Another study showed that genes which are quickly activated under cold stress and differentially expressed at the splicing level, were found to be modified by H3K27me3 in non-stress conditions (Vyse et al, 2020). These reports suggest a dynamic regulation of temperature stress-responsive genes by alternative RNA processing and histone modification
In Arabidopsis, the Nuclear speckle RNA binding proteins (NSRs) have been known as regulators of AS functioning in auxinassociated developmental processes such as lateral root formation (Bazin et al, 2018)
Summary
Messenger RNA production is a fantastically complex process in eukaryotes, including transcription of mRNA precursors followed by capping, splicing, and polyadenylation. Alternative RNA processing, including splicing and polyadenylation (AS/APA), leads to the formation of distinct mRNA isoforms and explains how massive proteomic complexity can be accomplished with the relatively few genes in higher eukaryotes (Elkon et al, 2013; Tian and Manley, 2016). Recent advances based on a vast amount of high-throughput sequencing data indicate that nearly 95% of multi-exon mammalian genes undergo alternative splicing (Pan et al, 2008; Barash et al, 2010) and more than 70% of mammalian genes express APA isoforms (Derti et al, 2012; Hoque et al, 2013). AS/APA have gained renewed and expanded consideration as crucial regulators of gene expression and contribute to development and cellular differentiation and proliferation, neuron activation and other biological processes (Hong et al, 2018; Xu and Zhang, 2018; Fan et al, 2018; Yoshimi et al, 2019)
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