The epithelial splicing factors ESRP1 and ESRP2 positively and negatively regulate alternative splicing events

Epithelial Splicing Regulatory Proteins 1 and 2 (ESRP1 and ESRP2) are recently discovered epithelial-specific RNA-binding proteins that promote splicing of the epithelial variant of the FGFR2, ENAH, CD44, and CTNND1 transcripts. To catalogue a larger set of splicing events under the regulation of the ESRPs, we profiled splicing changes induced by RNA interference-mediated knockdown of ESRP1 and ESRP2 expression in a human epithelial cell line using the splicing-sensitive Affymetrix Exon ST1.0 Arrays. Analysis of the microarray data using the previously described MADS tool resulted in the identification of over a hundred candidate ESRP-regulated splicing events. We were able to independently validate 37 of these targets by RT-PCR. The ESRP-regulated events encompass all known types of alternative splicing events. Importantly, a number of these regulated splicing events occur in gene transcripts that encode proteins with well-described roles in the regulation of actin cytoskeleton organization, cell-cell adhesion, cell polarity, and cell migration. In sum, this work reveals a novel list of transcripts differentially spliced in epithelial and mesenchymal cells, implying that coordinated alternative splicing plays a critical role in determination of cell type identity.

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Warzecha CC, Shen S, Xing Y, Carstens RP