Drosophila PSI controls circadian period and the phase of circadian behavior under temperature cycle via tim splicing
Abstract
The Drosophila circadian pacemaker consists of transcriptional feedback loops subjected to post-transcriptional and post-translational regulation. While post-translational regulatory mechanisms have been studied in detail, much less is known about circadian post-transcriptional control. Thus, we targeted 364 RNA binding and RNA associated proteins with RNA interference. Among the 43 hits we identified was the alternative splicing regulator P-element somatic inhibitor (PSI). PSI regulates the thermosensitive alternative splicing of timeless (tim), promoting splicing events favored at warm temperature over those increased at cold temperature. Psi downregulation shortens the period of circadian rhythms and advances the phase of circadian behavior under temperature cycle. Interestingly, both phenotypes were suppressed in flies that could produce TIM proteins only from a transgene that cannot form the thermosensitive splicing isoforms. Therefore, we conclude that PSI regulates the period of Drosophila circadian rhythms and circadian behavior phase during temperature cycling through its modulation of the tim splicing pattern.
Data availability
All source data are included in this submission
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The PSI-U1 snRNP interaction regulates male mating behavior in DrosophilaNCBI Gene Expression Omnibus, GSE79916.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
National Institute of General Medical Sciences (1R35GM118087)
- Patrick Emery
National Institute of General Medical Sciences (1R01GM125859)
- Sebastian Kadener
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Reviewing Editor
- Mani Ramaswami, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
Version history
- Received: July 10, 2019
- Accepted: November 7, 2019
- Accepted Manuscript published: November 8, 2019 (version 1)
- Version of Record published: December 3, 2019 (version 2)
Copyright
© 2019, Foley et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.