Suboptimal RNA-RNA interaction limits U1 snRNP inhibition of canonical mRNA 3' processing

It is increasingly appreciated that U1 snRNP transcriptomically suppresses the usage of intronic polyadenylation site (PAS) of mRNAs, an outstanding question is why frequently used PASs are not suppressed. Here we found that U1 snRNP could be transiently associated with sequences upstream of actionable PASs in human cells, and RNA-RNA interaction might contribute to the association. By focusing on individual PAS, we showed that the stable assembly of U1 snRNP near PAS might be generally required for U1 inhibition of mRNA 3' processing. Therefore, actionable PASs that often lack optimal U1 snRNP docking site nearby is free from U1 inhibitory effect. Consistently, natural 5' splicing site (5'-SS) is moderately enriched ~250 nt upstream of intronic PASs whose usage is sensitive to functional knockdown of U1 snRNA. Collectively, our results provided an insight into how U1 snRNP selectively inhibits the usage of PASs in a cellular context, and supported a prevailing model that U1 snRNP scans pre-mRNA through RNA-RNA interaction to find a stable interaction site to exercise its function in pre-mRNA processing, including repressing the usage of cryptic PASs.