Harris N L, Senapathy P
Laboratory for Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge 02139.
Nucleic Acids Res. 1990 May 25;18(10):3015-9. doi: 10.1093/nar/18.10.3015.
An intermediate stage in the process of eukaryotic RNA splicing is the formation of a lariat structure. It is anchored at an adenosine residue in intron between 10 and 50 nucleotides upstream of the 3' splice site. A short conserved sequence (the branch point sequence) functions as the recognition signal for the site of lariat formation. It has been generally assumed that the branch point is recognized mainly by the presence of its unique sequence where the lariat is formed. However, the known branch point consensus sequence is found to be distributed nearly randomly throughout the gene sequence with only a slightly higher frequency in the expected lariat region. Further, the known consensus sequence is found to be clearly inadequate to specify branch points. These observations have implications for understanding the mechanism of branch point recognition in the process of splicing, and the possible evolution of the branch point signal.
真核生物RNA剪接过程中的一个中间阶段是套索结构的形成。它锚定在3'剪接位点上游10至50个核苷酸之间的内含子中的一个腺苷残基上。一个短的保守序列(分支点序列)作为套索形成位点的识别信号。一般认为,分支点主要通过其在套索形成处的独特序列来识别。然而,已知的分支点共有序列在整个基因序列中几乎是随机分布的,仅在预期的套索区域频率略高。此外,发现已知的共有序列明显不足以确定分支点。这些观察结果对于理解剪接过程中分支点识别的机制以及分支点信号的可能进化具有启示意义。