Open AccessSmall nuclear RNAs from Saccharomyces cerevisiae: unexpected diversity in abundance, size, and molecular complexity.
Author(s) -
Nora Riedel,
Jo Ann Wise,
Harold Swerdlow,
Arkady Mak,
Christine Guthrie
Publication year - 1986
Publication title -
proceedings of the national academy of sciences of the united states of america
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 5.011
H-Index - 771
eISSN - 1091-6490
pISSN - 0027-8424
DOI - 10.1073/pnas.83.21.8097
Subject(s) - saccharomyces cerevisiae , eukaryote , biology , yeast , small nucleolar rna , small nuclear rna , rna , genetics , abundance (ecology) , non coding rna , genome , gene , ecology
Previous work showed that the simple eukaryote Saccharomyces cerevisiae contains a group of RNAs with the general structural properties predicted for small nuclear RNAs (snRNAs), including possession of the characteristic trimethylguanosine 5'-terminal cap. It was also demonstrated that, unlike their metazoan counterparts, the yeast snRNAs are present in low abundance (200-500 molecules per haploid cell). We have now used antibody directed against the 5' cap to investigate the total set size of snRNAs in this organism. We present evidence that the number of distinct yeast snRNAs is on the order of several dozen, that the length of the capped RNAs can exceed 1000 nucleotides, and that the relative abundance of a subset of these RNAs is 1/5th to 1/20th that of the class of snRNAs described previously. These findings suggest that the six highly abundant species of snRNAs (U1-U6) typically reported in metazoans may represent a serious underestimation of the total diversity of snRNAs in eukaryotes.