Transcriptomic Analysis of PNN- and ESRP1-regulation in Human Corneal Epithelial Cells

Pnn depletion in developing mouse corneal epithelium led to disrupted alternative splicing of multiple ESRP-regulated epithelial-type exons. In human corneal epithelial cells (HCET), ESRP1 and PNN displayed close localization in and around nuclear speckles and their physical association in protein complexes was identified. In this study, gene expression profiling was performed to identify PNN- and ESRP1-regulated alternative pre-mRNA splicing in human corneal epithelial cells. Immortalized human corneal epithelial cells harboring doxycycline-inducible shRNA against PNN or ESRP1 were created. Whole transcriptome array analysis on ESRP1 or PNN knockdown HCET cells revealed clear alterations in transcript level and splicing pattern of specific subsets of genes with significant overlaps in their candidate targets. Our data suggest that ESRP1 and PNN modulate alternative splicing of a specific subset of exons, but not general splicing events. ESRP1 and PNN may together participate in the regulation of epithelial-specific splicing program in a genome-wide fashion. Parental HCET, shRNA-PNN HCET, and shRNA-ESRP1 HCET cells were cultured for 3 days with/without doxycycline. Total RNA was isolated from four biological replicates of each sample group and then subjected to hGlue3_0 transcriptome array analysis.