Alternative splicing: transcriptional regulatory network in agroforestry

Syed Sarfaraz Hussain; Manzar Abbas; Sammar Abbas; Mingke Wei; Ahmed H El-Sappah; Yuhan Sun; Yun Li; Arthur J Ragauskas; Quanzi Li

doi:10.3389/fpls.2023.1158965

Alternative splicing: transcriptional regulatory network in agroforestry

Front Plant Sci. 2023 Apr 12:14:1158965. doi: 10.3389/fpls.2023.1158965. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Syed Sarfaraz Hussain^{1

2}, Manzar Abbas³, Sammar Abbas⁴, Mingke Wei², Ahmed H El-Sappah^{3

5}, Yuhan Sun¹, Yun Li¹, Arthur J Ragauskas^{6

7

8}, Quanzi Li²

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Tree Genetics and Breeding, Engineering Technology Research Center of Black Locust of National Forestry and Grassland Administration, College of Biological Sciences and Technology, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing, China.
² State Key Laboratory of Tree Genetics and Breeding, Chinese Academy of Forestry, Beijing, China.
³ Faculty of Agriculture, Forestry and Food Engineering, Yibin University, Yibin, Sichuan, China.
⁴ College of Biological Sciences and Biotechnology, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing, China.
⁵ Genetics Department, Faculty of Agriculture, Zagazig University, Zagazig, Egypt.
⁶ Department of Forestry, Wildlife, and Fisheries, Center for Renewable Carbon, University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture, Knoxville, TN, United States.
⁷ Joint Institute for Biological Science, Biosciences Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN, United States.
⁸ Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, The University of Tennessee-Knoxville, Knoxville, TN, United States.

Abstract

Alternative splicing (AS) in plants plays a key role in regulating the expression of numerous transcripts from a single gene in a regulatory pathway. Variable concentrations of growth regulatory hormones and external stimuli trigger alternative splicing to switch among different growth stages and adapt to environmental stresses. In the AS phenomenon, a spliceosome causes differential transcriptional modifications in messenger RNA (mRNAs), resulting in partial or complete retention of one or more introns as compared to fully spliced mRNA. Differentially expressed proteins translated from intron-retaining messenger RNA (mRNA^ir) perform vital functions in the feedback mechanism. At the post-transcriptional level, AS causes the remodeling of transcription factors (TFs) by the addition or deletion of binding domains to activate and/or repress transcription. In this study, we have summarized the specific role of AS in the regulation of gene expression through repression and activation of the transcriptional regulatory network under external stimuli and switch among developmental stages.

Keywords: alternative splicing; gene regulatory network; intron retaining; spliceosome; transcriptional regulation.

Publication types

Review

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (32071787 and 32171769) and the Scientific Research Project of Yibin University (XJ2020007601).