Conservation in budding yeast of a kinase specific for SR splicing factors

SR protein kinases (SRPKs) and their substrates, the SR family of serine/arginine-rich pre-mRNA splicing factors, appear to be key regulators of alternative splicing. Although SR proteins have been well characterized through biochemical experiments in metazoans, their functions in vivo are unclear. Because of the strict splice site consensus and near absence of alternative splicing in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, it had been thought that budding yeast would lack an SRPK and its substrates. Here, we present structural, biochemical, and cell-biological evidence that directly demonstrates an SR protein kinase, Sky1p, as well as a number of SRPK substrates in S. cerevisiae. One of these substrates is Npl3p, an SR-like protein involved in mRNA export. This finding raises the provocative possibility that Sky1p, and by extension metazoan SRPKs, regulates mRNA export or the nucleocytoplasmic shuttling of RS domain proteins. The unexpected discovery of an SR protein kinase in budding yeast provides a foundation for genetic dissection of the biological functions of SR proteins and their kinases.