Remodeling of the transmembrane segment in human glycophorin by aberrant RNA splicing

This paper describes the identification in S-s-U-erythrocytes of a novel glycophorin (GP), He(P2), with structural variations in both its extracellular and transmembrane domains. In the exon II-intron 2 region, a sequence transfer from GPA to GPB, probably via the mechanism of gene conversion, was associated with the induction of multiple untemplated nucleotide replacements. These changes defined the sequence for the He epitope while concomitantly abolishing GPB-associated N antigenicity. Moreover, the GPHe(P2) gene carries two splice site mutations that coordinately affect the processing of exon V coding for the transmembrane segment. The C-->G transversion at the 3' end of exon V created a cryptic acceptor splice site, whereas the G-->T transversion at the +5 position of intron 5 altered the consensus of the donor splice site. Transcript sequencing revealed that neither site was utilized in the splicing of GPHe(P2) pre-mRNA. Rather, complete skipping of exon V and subsequent joining of exon IV to exon VI caused a shift in the open reading frame, which remodeled GPHe(P2) with an elongated new hydrophobic sequence for membrane anchoring. As a result, GPHe(P2) does not display the S and U epitopes although it still contains an intact linear sequence for the two antigens. These findings illustrate how exon and intron sequences concertedly determine the specificity of in vivo splice site selection. In addition, they pinpoint the conformational dependence of the S, s, and U antigens and the importance of the hinge region for their presentation.