Alternative Splicing for Improving Abiotic Stress Tolerance and Agronomic Traits in Crop Plants
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REVIEW ARTICLE
Alternative Splicing for Improving Abiotic Stress Tolerance and Agronomic Traits in Crop Plants Seojung Kim1 · Tae‑Houn Kim1 Received: 31 July 2020 / Revised: 10 September 2020 / Accepted: 13 September 2020 © Korean Society of Plant Biologist 2020
Abstract Most eukaryotic genes undergo various post-transcriptional processing events before being translated into proteins. Alternative splicing (AS) is one such event and is an essential mechanism in post-transcriptional gene regulation that allows multiple mRNA variants to be expressed from a single pre-mRNA, thereby expending the functional capacity of a gene as well as the organismal complexity. With the advancement of next-generation sequencing technologies, extensive transcriptomic resources in plant species have determined crucial roles of AS in the regulation of developmental processes and adaption to environmental stresses. We review here recent studies of AS events and splicing factors that specifically affect abiotic-stress tolerance in crop plants, including other agricultural traits. Understanding how alternative splicing modulates plant development and abiotic-stress responses may provide new insights for improving the environmental fitness and productivity of crop plants. Keywords Alternative splicing · Abiotic stress · Agricultural traits
Introduction Plants have complex regulatory mechanisms that allow adaptation to the changing environments by modulating the multi-layered global gene expression. In eukaryotic cells, the initial products of transcription called precursor messenger RNAs (pre-mRNAs), undergo a series of modification events to be processed into mature mRNAs before translation. Most of the multicellular eukaryotic genes are interrupted by introns; these non-coding regions are generally much longer than the coding parts of the genome, with varying length, number, and density in different species (Adams et al. 2000; Arabidopsis Genome 2000; Venter et al. 2001; Gregory 2005). Thus, RNA splicing (the process of removing introns) needs to be precisely controlled since the inaccurate recognition of exon–intron boundaries might lead to a frameshift, resulting in completely different outcomes from the original intended one. * Tae‑Houn Kim [email protected] Seojung Kim [email protected] 1
Department of Biotechnology, Program of Bio‑Health Convergence, Duksung Women’s University, Seoul 01369, Korea
The splicing process is achieved by the spliceosome, a macromolecular RNA/protein complex composed of five small nuclear ribonucleoproteins (snRNP) and over 150 protein factors (Zhou et al. 2002; Jurica and Moore 2003). During the process, the spliceosome complex assembled with splicing factors is rearranged in a stepwise manner to form a catalytically active structure. The catalytically active spliceosome promotes two sequential chemical reactions: cleavages at splice sites and ligations of exons. Despite the high fidelity for catalytic splicing steps, alternative recognition of splicing signals can result in diverse combinatio
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