title: Requirement for highly efficient pre-mRNA splicing during Drosophila early embryonic development.
abstract: Drosophila syncytial nuclear divisions limit transcription unit size of early zygotic genes. As mitosis inhibits not only transcription, but also pre-mRNA splicing, we reasoned that constraints on splicing were likely to exist in the early embryo, being splicing avoidance a possible explanation why most early zygotic genes are intronless. We isolated two mutant alleles for a subunit of the NTC/Prp19 complexes, which specifically impaired pre-mRNA splicing of early zygotic but not maternally encoded transcripts. We hypothesized that the requirements for pre-mRNA splicing efficiency were likely to vary during development. Ectopic maternal expression of an early zygotic pre-mRNA was sufficient to suppress its splicing defects in the mutant background. Furthermore, a small early zygotic transcript with multiple introns was poorly spliced in wild-type embryos. Our findings demonstrate for the first time the existence of a developmental pre-requisite for highly efficient splicing during Drosophila early embryonic development and suggest in highly proliferative tissues a need for coordination between cell cycle and gene architecture to ensure correct gene expression and avoid abnormally processed transcripts. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.02181.001.
authors.affiliation: Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência, Oeiras, Portugal.
authors.forename: Leonardo Gastón
authors.initials: LG
authors.lastname: Guilgur
authors.forename: Pedro
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Prudêncio
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Sobral
authors.forename: Denisa
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Liszekova
authors.forename: André
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Rosa
authors.forename: Rui Goncalo
authors.initials: RG
authors.lastname: Martinho
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D029721:Drosophila Proteins / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D004331:Drosophila melanogaster / Q000196:embryology* / Q000235:genetics; D047108:Embryonic Development / Q000235:genetics*; D005260:Female; D009866:Oogenesis; D012322:RNA Precursors / Q000235:genetics*; D012333:RNA, Messenger / Q000235:genetics*
chemical_list: D029721:Drosophila Proteins; D012322:RNA Precursors; D012333:RNA, Messenger
keywords: Prp19/NTC; Syf1/Xab2; early zygotic genes; fast development; mRNA splicing
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