Inverse splicing of a discontinuous pre-mRNA intron generates a circular exon in a HeLa cell nuclear extract

We have recently reported the first example of inverse splicing of a eukaryotic pre-mRNA intron using a whole cell extract from the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. The concomitant circularization of the exon in the course of this splicing reaction gave rise to the hypothesis that the circular RNA species, which had been recently discovered in vivo in mammalian cells, were generated by inverse splicing. Here we report the formation of a circular exon in HeLa cell nuclear extracts by an inverse splicing reaction of the second intron of the human beta-globin gene from a pre-mRNA transcript in which the two intron halves flanked an artificially fused, single exon. Our data demonstrate that the mammalian pre-mRNA splicing system has indeed an intrinsic capability of aligning splice sites in reverse order and that this alignment can be followed by a complete splicing reaction, whereby the discontinuous intron sequences are removed. Thus we propose that circular exons in vivo arise as a result of an inverse splicing reaction following the pairing of a 5' splice site with an upstream 3' splice site and that the frequency of this event is influenced by the presence and strength of other, competing splice sites.