Genome-wide analysis of acute effects of ligth on the regulation of alternative splicing in Arabidopsis thaliana

ESTEFANIA MANCINI; SABRINA SÁNCHEZ; RUBEN GUSTAVO SCHLAEN; ANDRES ROMANOWSKI; MARCELO YANOVSKY

Congreso; VI Congreso Argentino Bioinformatica y Biologia Computacional; 2015

Light modulates plant growth and development to a great extent by regulating gene expression programs. Here we evaluated the effect of light on alternative splicing (AS) in light-grown Arabidopsis thaliana plants using high throughput RNA sequencing (RNA-seq). We found that an acute light pulse given in the middle of the night, a treatment that simulates photoperiod lengthening, affected AS events corresponding to 382 genes. Some of these AS events were associated with genes involved in primary metabolism and stress responses, which may help to adjust metabolic and physiological responses to seasonal changes. We also found that several core clock genes showed changes in AS in response to the light treatment, suggesting that light regulation of AS may play a role in clock entrainment. Finally, we found that many light-regulated AS events were associated with genes encoding RNA processing proteins and splicing factors, supporting the idea that light regulates this post-transcriptional regulatory layer through AS regulation of splicing factors. Interestingly, the effect of a red-light pulse on AS of a gene encoding a splicing factor was not impaired in a quintuple phytochrome mutant, providing unequivocal evidence that non-photosensory photoreceptors control AS in light-grown plants. This article is protected by copyright