Alternative pre-mRNA splicing in Drosophila spliceosomal assembly factor RNP-4F during development

The 5'- and 3'-UTR regions in pre-mRNAs play a variety of roles in controlling eukaryotic gene expression, including translational modulation. Here we report the results of a systematic study of alternative splicing in rnp-4f, which encodes a Drosophila spliceosomal assembly factor. We show that most of the nine introns are constitutively spliced, but several patterns of alternative splicing are observed in two pre-mRNA regions including the 5'-UTR. Intron V is shown to be of recent evolutionary origin and is infrequently spliced, resulting in generation of an in-frame stop codon and a predicted truncated protein lacking a nuclear localization signal, so that alternative splicing regulates its subcellular localization. Intron 0, located in the 5'-UTR, is subject to three different splicing decisions in D. melanogaster. Northern analysis of poly(A+) mRNAs reveals two differently sized rnp-4f mRNA isoforms in this species. A switch in relative isoform abundance occurs during mid-embryo stages, when the larger isoform becomes more abundant. This isoform is shown to represent intron 0 unspliced mRNA, whereas the smaller transcript represents the product of alternative splicing. Comparative genomic analysis predicts that intron 0 is present in diverse Drosophila species. Intron 0 splicing results in loss of an evolutionarily conserved stem-loop constituting a potential cis-regulatory element at the 3'-splice site. A model is proposed for the role of this element both in 5'-UTR alternative splicing decisions and in RNP-4F translational modulation. Preliminary evidences in support of our model are discussed.