PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - Jikai Wen AU - Laetitia Marzi AU - Jianming Wang AU - Jinxin Ye AU - Saverio Brogna TI - Splicing-dependent NMD requires Prp17 in <em>Saccharomyces cerevisiae</em> AID - 10.1101/149245 DP - 2017 Jan 01 TA - bioRxiv PG - 149245 4099 - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/07/24/149245.short 4100 - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/07/24/149245.full AB - Nonsense mediated mRNA decay (NMD) denotes that nonsense mutations, or errors in gene expression which introduce a premature translation termination codon (PTC), can lead to a reduction of mRNA level in any organism. Remarkably, whether a PTC will lead to NMD often depends on the presence of a downstream intron, splicing of which marks a spliced mRNA by deposition of the exon junction complex (EJC) in mammalian cells so as to affect its translation and degradation in the cytoplasm. Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which has introns only in 5% of its genes and lacks proteins essential for the EJC assembly, was not expected to undergo splicing-dependent NMD. Conversely, here we report that the presence of an intron can also enhance NMD in this organism. Following screening for genes that might be specifically involved in splicing-dependent NMD, we identified splicing factor Prp17 and surprisingly found that a portion of it co-sediments with ribosomal fractions. Together, our results indicate that whilst splicing-dependent NMD is a universal feature of eukaryotes this appears to be distinct from cytoplasmic NMD and depends on interactions between the spliceosome and ribosome that are unconnected to an EJC-like marking mechanism.Topic: Prp17, splicing, EJC, NMD, translation, S. cerevisiae, yeast, RNA