Stress-induced splicing activation of immediate early genes by nuclear speckle reorganization [ANI]

Current models posit that nuclear speckles (NSs) serve as reservoirs of splicing factors and facilitate post-transcriptional processing of mRNA. Here, we discovered that ribotoxic stress leads to a profound reorganization of NSs with enhanced recruitment of factors required for 5' and 3' splice site recognition including the RNA-binding protein TIAR, U1 snRNP proteins and U2-associated factor 65, as well as serine 2 phosphorylated RNA polymerase II. NS reorganization is dependent on the stress-activated p38 mitogen activated protein kinase (MAPK), and goes along with splicing activation of both pre-existing and nascent pre-mRNAs. In particular, ribotoxic stress causes targeted excision of retained introns from pre-mRNAs of immediate early genes (IEGs), whose transcription is induced during the stress response. Importantly, enhanced splicing of the IEGs ZFP36 and FOS is accompanied by re-localization of the corresponding mRNAs to NSs. Our study reveals NSs as a dynamic compartment that is remodeled under stress conditions to promote the excision of retained introns and thereby enhance the expression and processing of IEG mRNAs. Analysis of alternative splicing changes and differential gene expression in HeLa-TREx cells upon anisomycin-induced ribotoxic stress. mRNA Half-Life (HL) determination via RNA sequencing 4-thio U labeling combined with sequencing for distinguishing nascent and pre-existing mRNA pool