Coupling of spliceosome complexity to intron diversity

Abstract

We determined that over 40 spliceosomal proteins are conserved between many fungal species and humans but were lost during the evolution of S. cerevisiae, an intron-poor yeast with unusually rigid splicing signals. We analyzed null mutations in a subset of these factors, most of which had not been investigated previously, in the intron-rich yeast Cryptococcus neoformans. We found they govern splicing efficiency of introns with divergent spacing between intron elements. Importantly, most of these factors also suppress usage of weak nearby cryptic/alternative splice sites. Among these, orthologs of GPATCH1 and the helicase DHX35 display correlated functional signatures and copurify with each other as well as components of catalytically active spliceosomes, identifying a conserved G-patch/helicase pair that promotes splicing fidelity. We propose that a significant fraction of spliceosomal proteins in humans and most eukaryotes are involved in limiting splicing errors, potentially through kinetic proofreading mechanisms, thereby enabling greater intron diversity.