Analysis of smu-1, a gene that regulates the alternative splicing of unc-52 pre-mRNA in Caenorhabditis elegans

Mutations in the smu-1 gene of Caenorhabditis elegans were previously shown to suppress mutations in the genes mec-8 and unc-52. mec-8 encodes a putative RNA binding protein that affects the accumulation of specific alternatively spliced mRNA isoforms produced by unc-52 and other genes. unc-52 encodes a set of basement membrane proteins, homologs of mammalian perlecan, that are important for body wall muscle assembly and attachment to basement membrane, hypodermis, and cuticle. We show that a presumptive null mutation in smu-1 suppresses nonsense mutations in exon 17 but not exon 18 of unc-52 and enhances the phenotype conferred by an unc-52 splice site mutation in intron 16. We have used reverse transcription-PCR and RNase protection to show that loss-of-function smu-1 mutations enhance accumulation in larvae of an alternatively spliced isoform that skips exon 17 but not exon 18 of unc-52. We have identified smu-1 molecularly; it encodes a nuclearly localized protein that contains five WD motifs and is ubiquitously expressed. The SMU-1 amino acid sequence is more than 60% identical to a predicted human protein of unknown function. We propose that smu-1 encodes a trans-acting factor that regulates the alternative splicing of the pre-mRNA of unc-52 and other genes.