ABSrRACT The most abundant of the stable small nuclear RNAs of eukaryotic cells, U-1 small nuclear RNA, is exactly complementary to the consensus sequences at RNA splice sites.We propose that this RNA is the recognition component of the nuclear RNA splicing enzyme and forms base pairs with both ends of an intron so as to align them for cutting and splicing.Intramolecular RNA splicing, first discovered for the adenovirus-specific RNA (1-3), occurs in the expression of numerous eukaryotic genes (4). At present there are three known classes of DNA sequences at splice sites, found in genes for a chloroplast tRNA (5), yeast tRNAs (6), and vertebrate mRNAs (7-9). Each class has distinctive sequence characteristics. For the splice sites of vertebrate genes, comparisons of a limited set of sequences (7,8) showed that introns were flanked in every case by 5'-/ G-T-(intron)-A-G/-3'. Subsequent sequences have borne this out (9) and have shown that the 5' ("upstream") and 3' ("downstream") ends of introns have approximately the following consensus or "optimal" sequences:
5'-(exon)-A-G/G-T-A-A-G-T-A-(intron) -T-T-T-T-Y-T-T-T-T-T-T-C-T-T-N-C-A-G/G-(exon)-3'.The upstream and downstream splice sites in nuclear RNA molecules presumably must be brought together for RNA splicing to occur. This could be achieved by intramolecular base pairing, but no appropriate complementary structures have been found reproducibly in the vicinity of splice sites (10). We propose an alternative mechanism in which upstream and downstream splicing sites form base pairs with another RNA molecule which could be a structural component of the splicing enzyme(s). There may be an example comparable to this proposed splicing system in RNase P of Escherichia coli, which is a site-specific RNase with an essential RNA component (I1).THE MODEL We considered that such an effector RNA might be found among the discrete; stable, small nuclear RNAs (snRNAs) that are ubiquitous in eukaryotic cells (12). Sequences have been reported for several of these (13-17). When we compared the sequence of U-i snRNA from rat hepatoma (13) with sequences of the optimal splice site (Fig. 1), we discovered that the first 10 nucleotides after the U-1 RNA cap are perfectly complementary to the 9 nucleotides of the optimal upstream site and to the tetranucleotide C-A-G/G from the optimal downstream site. The next 11 nucleotides of U-I are purine-rich and can be aligned with the pyrimidine-rich segment of the downstream site. This striking complementarity with splicing sites is not found in any of the other snRNAs now sequenced, which are U-2 (14), 4.5S (15), and adenovirus VA-I RNAs (16,17). We therefore propose that U-1 snRNA in the RNA splicing complex forms base pairs with both ends of an intron in a large nuclear RNA molecule as shown in Fig. 2, bringing