Identification and analysis of U5 snRNA variants in Drosophila
- LI CHEN1,6,
- DENNIS J. LULLO1,6,
- ENBO MA1,
- SUSAN E. CELNIKER4,
- DONALD C. RIO1, and
- JENNIFER A. DOUDNA1,2,3,5
- 1Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, 2Department of Chemistry, and 3Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, California 94720, USA4Life Sciences Division and 5Physical Biosciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720, USA
Abstract
Distinct isoforms of spliceosomal RNAs may be involved in regulating pre-messenger RNA splicing in eukaryotic cells. During a large-scale effort to identify small noncoding RNAs in Drosophila, we isolated a U5 snRNA-like molecule containing a 5′ segment identical to that of the canonical (major) U5 snRNA but with a variant Sm binding site and a distinct 3′ hairpin sequence. Based on this finding, another six similar U5 snRNA-like sequences were identified within the Drosophila genome by sequence similarity to the invariant loop in the 5′ half of U5. Interestingly, although all of these variants are expressed in vivo, each shows a distinct temporal expression profile during Drosophila development, and one is expressed primarily in fly heads. The presence of these U5 snRNA variants within RNP particles suggests their role in splicing and implies a possible connection to regulation of developmental and tissue-specific gene expression.
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Footnotes
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↵6 These authors contributed equally to this work.
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Article and publication are at http://www.rnajournal.org/cgi/doi/10.1261/rna.2141505.
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- Accepted July 14, 2005.
- Received June 20, 2005.
- Copyright 2005 by RNA Society
