University of Jyväskylä, Department of Biological and Environmental Science, Survontie 9, FI-40014, Jyväskylä, Finland.
University of Turku, Institute of Biomedicine, Kiinamyllynkatu 10, FI-20520, Turku, Finland.
Sci Rep. 2018 May 15;8(1):7577. doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-25872-0.
Alternative splicing, in which one gene produce multiple transcripts, may influence how adaptive genes respond to specific environments. A newly produced transcriptome of Drosophila montana shows the Gs1-like (Gs1l) gene to express multiple splice variants and to be down regulated in cold acclimated flies with increased cold tolerance. Gs1l's effect on cold tolerance was further tested by injecting cold acclimated and non-acclimated flies from two distantly located northern and southern fly populations with double stranded RNA (dsRNA) targeting Gs1l. While both populations had similar cold acclimation responses, dsRNA injections only effected the northern population. The nature of splicing expression was then investigated in the northern population by confirming which Gs1l variants are present, by comparing the expression of different gene regions and by predicting the protein structures of splices using homology modelling. We find different splices of Gs1l not only appear to have independent impacts on cold acclimation but also elicit different effects in populations originating from two very different environments. Also, at the protein level, Gs1l appears homologous to the human HDHD1A protein and some splices might produce functionally different proteins though this needs to be verified in future studies by measuring the particular protein levels. Taken together, Gs1l appears to be an interesting new candidate to test how splicing influences adaptations.
选择性剪接，即一个基因产生多个转录本，可能会影响适应性基因如何对特定环境做出反应。新产生的黑腹果蝇 montana 转录组显示，Gs1 样（Gs1l）基因表达多种剪接变体，并在冷驯化的具有更高耐寒性的果蝇中下调。通过向来自两个地理位置相距甚远的北部和南部果蝇种群的冷驯化和非冷驯化果蝇注射靶向 Gs1l 的双链 RNA（dsRNA），进一步测试了 Gs1l 对耐寒性的影响。尽管两个种群的冷驯化反应相似，但 dsRNA 注射仅对北部种群产生影响。然后，通过比较不同基因区域的表达并通过同源建模预测剪接的蛋白质结构，在北部种群中研究了剪接表达的性质。我们发现，Gs1l 的不同剪接不仅似乎对冷驯化有独立的影响，而且在起源于两个非常不同环境的种群中产生不同的影响。此外，在蛋白质水平上，Gs1l 似乎与人的 HDHD1A 蛋白同源，并且一些剪接可能产生功能不同的蛋白质，但这需要在未来的研究中通过测量特定的蛋白质水平来验证。综上所述，Gs1l 似乎是一个有趣的新候选基因，可以用来测试剪接如何影响适应性。
