Nuclear pre-mRNA splicing in the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe strictly requires an intron-contained, conserved sequence element

Abstract

It has recently been argued that pre-mRNA splicing in the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe may be more similar to splicing in metazoan species than in the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. In this report we show that, contrary to this assumption, the conserved sequence element 5'-CTPu APy-3' found in all S. pombe introns 6-18 nucleotides upstream of the 3' splice site is, like the TACTAAC box in S. cerevisiae, indispensable for efficient splicing. The conserved adenine residue of this sequence is used for branch formation and point mutations introduced into the CTPuAPy sequence abolish splicing and seem not to result in the recruitment of cryptic branch sites. We also show that an S. cerevisiae intron is correctly excised in S. pombe whereby the TACTAAC box is used in branch formation.