Small changes in ambient temperature affect alternative splicing inArabidopsis thaliana

Abstract

Alternative splicing (AS) gives rise to multiple mRNA isoforms from the same gene, providing possibilities to regulate gene expression beyond the level of transcription. In a recent paper in Nucleic Acids Research we used a high resolution RT-PCR based panel to study changes in AS patterns in plants with altered levels of an hnRNP-like RNA-binding protein in Arabidopsis thaliana. Furthermore, we detected significant changes in AS patterns between different Arabidopsis ecotypes. Here we investigated how small changes in ambient temperature affect AS. We found significant changes in AS for 12 of 28 investigated events (43%) upon transfer of Arabidopsis plants from 20°C to 16°C and for 6 of the 28 investigated events (21%) upon transfer from 20°C to 24°C.

How does temperature affect splicing events? Isoform switching of splicing factors regulates splicing of LATE ELONGATED HYPOCOTYL (LHY)

“…Third, the altered splicing of PTB1 , PTB2 , and U2AF65A on cooling partially recovered on adaptation to the lower temperature and could therefore account for cold‐induced transient AS changes such as LHY I1R. Here, we have focussed on three SFs, but it is quite possible that other factors are involved; For example, splicing of the PUM23 gene, encoding a PUMILIO RNA‐binding protein, is affected by small temperature changes, which alter the balance between functional and non‐functional transcripts (Streitner et al, ). Thus, our data provide another example of combinatorial control of splice site selection in AS, which is already well established in other systems (Barash et al, ; Lee & Rio, ; Smith & Valcarcel, ).…”

Trimethylguanosine Synthase1 (TGS1) Is Essential for Chilling Tolerance

“…Furthermore, temperature changes affect the splicing patterns of the splicing regulators themselves (Lazar and Goodman, 2000;Palusa et al, 2007). Indeed, alternative splicing can be seen in ambient temperature shifts from 20°C to only 16°C (Streitner et al, 2013), indicating that changes in splicing may be critical to the ability of plants to adjust to cold. The fact that the Arabidopsis tgs1 mutants produce defective flowers in chilling conditions (Fig.…”

Role of alternative pre-mRNA splicing in temperature signaling

“…For example, it has been shown that an increase as small as 4 8C in ambient temperature (from 16 8C to 20 8C, and from 20 8C to 24 8C) was sufficient to stimulate the AS of the RNA-binding protein PUMILIO 23 (PUM23) and three other regulatory proteins, the mitochondrial transcription termination factor-related (mTERF) protein EMBRYO DEFECTIVE 3114 (EMB3114), SNF1 KINASE HOMOLOG 11 (AKIN11), and FYD [22].…”