A Ribonucleoprotein Supercomplex Involved in trans-Splicing of Organelle Group II Introns

Abstract

In the chloroplast of the green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, two discontinuous group II introns, psaA-i1 and psaAi2, splice in trans, and thus their excision process resembles the nuclear spliceosomal splicing pathway. Here, we address the question whether fragmentation of trans-acting RNAs is accompanied by the formation of a chloroplast spliceosome-like machinery. Using a combination of liquid chromatographymass spectrometry (LC-MS), size exclusion chromatography, and quantitative RT-PCR, we provide the first characterization of a high molecular weight ribonucleoprotein apparatus participating in psaA mRNA splicing. This supercomplex contains two subcomplexes (I and II) that are responsible for trans-splicing of either psaA-i1 or psaA-i2. We further demonstrate that both subcomplexes are associated with intron RNA, which is a prerequisite for the correct assembly of subcomplex I. This study contributes further to our view of how the eukaryotic nuclear spliceosome evolved after bacterial endosymbiosis through fragmentation of self-splicing group II introns into a dynamic, protein-rich RNP machinery.The spliceosome is a dynamic RNP machinery that participates in the excision of mRNA introns in eukaryotes. This machinery consists of five small nuclear RNAs (snRNAs; U1, U2, U4, U5, and U6) and a large number of spliceosomal proteins (1, 2). It is generally accepted that spliceosomal snRNAs were derived from ancient group II introns, which were introduced into the eukaryotic cell after endosymbiosis (3, 4). Group II introns occur frequently in bacteria and organelles of fungi, algae, and higher plants but are rare in archaea and absent from nuclear genomes. Comparable with spliceosomal introns, the splicing reaction includes two transesterification reactions, yielding spliced exons and an excised intron lariat RNA.Despite the lack of significant sequence similarities, group II introns share a common secondary structure with six helical domains (D1-D6) surrounding a central wheel. During intron excision, these domains take over specific functions, and remarkably, they show plenty of functional and structural similarities to spliceosomal snRNAs (5-7). These similarities led to the assumption that during evolution of the nuclear splicing apparatus, group II introns fragmented and degenerated to spliceosomal snRNAs (3,8,9).In contrast to bacterial group II introns, most organelle group II introns display variant forms of degeneration and fragmentation (9). For example, many of the plant group II introns have mispaired domain structures (10, 11). Moreover, group II introns are able to split into autonomous fragments due to rearrangements of organelle genomes (12, 13). Consequently, they are transcribed independently, and association of precursor RNAs by base pairing generates a catalytically active group II intron structure that is finally processed by trans-splicing. Such degenerated and fragmented group II introns along with the interplay of discrete RNAs during the splicing reaction serve to demonstrate how snRNAs...

PPR-SMR1 is required for the splicing of multiple mitochondrial introns, interacts with Zm-mCSF1, and is essential for seed development in maize

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