Splice junctions are constrained by protein disorder

Abstract

We have discovered that positions of splice junctions in genes are constrained by the tolerance for disorder-promoting amino acids in the translated protein region. It is known that efficient splicing requires nucleotide bias at the splice junction; the preferred usage produces a distribution of amino acids that is disorder-promoting. We observe that efficiency of splicing, as seen in the amino-acid distribution, is not compromised to accommodate globular structure. Thus we infer that it is the positions of splice junctions in the gene that must be under constraint by the local protein environment. Examining exonic splicing enhancers found near the splice junction in the gene, reveals that these (short DNA motifs) are more prevalent in exons that encode disordered protein regions than exons encoding structured regions. Thus we also conclude that local protein features constrain efficient splicing more in structure than in disorder.