A novel spliceosomemediated Emphasis Type="Itali

Authors: Ryoma Kamikawa Yuji Inagaki Tetsuo Hashimoto

Publish Date: 2011/10/20

Volume: 3, Issue: 4, Pages: 193-197

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Abstract

Although spliceosomal introns are an abundant landmark in eukaryotic genomes the nuclear genome of the divergent eukaryote Giardia intestinalis the causative agent of giardiasis has been considered as “intronpoor” with only five canonical cisspliced introns However three research groups including ours have independently reported a novel class of spliceosomal introns in the G intestinalis genome Three proteincoding genes are split into pieces in the G intestinalis genome and each of the partial coding regions was independently transcribed into polyadenylated premature mRNAs premRNAs The two premRNAs directly interact with each other by an intermolecularstem structure formed between their noncoding portions and are then processed into mature mRNAs by spliceosomemediated transsplicing Here we summarize the recently published works on split introns “splintrons” in the G intestinalis genome and then provide our speculation on the functional property of the Giardia spliceosomes based on the putative ratio of splintrons to canonical introns Finally we discuss a scenario for the transition from typical GTAG boundaries to nontypical ATAC boundaries in a particular splintron of Giardia

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