Authors

Jagat K. Chhipi-Shrestha, Tilman Schneider-Poetsch, Takehiro Suzuki, Mari Mito, Khalid Khan, Naoshi Dohmae, Shintaro Iwasaki, and Minoru Yoshida

Abstract

Chemical splicing modulators that bind to the spliceosome have provided an attractive avenue for cancer treatment. Splicing modulators induce accumulation and subsequent translation of a subset of intron-retained mRNAs. However, the biological effect of proteins containing translated intron sequences remains unclear. Here, we identify a number of truncated proteins generated upon treatment with the splicing modulator spliceostatin A (SSA) via genome-wide ribosome profiling and bio-orthogonal noncanonical amino acid tagging (BONCAT) mass spectrometry. A subset of these truncated proteins has intrinsically disordered regions, forms insoluble cellular condensates, and triggers the proteotoxic stress response through c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK) phosphorylation, thereby inhibiting the mTORC1 pathway. In turn, this reduces global translation. These findings indicate that creating an overburden of condensate-prone proteins derived from introns represses translation and prevents further production of harmful truncated proteins. This mechanism appears to contribute to the antiproliferative and proapoptotic activity of splicing modulators.

Paper Information

Journal
: Cell Chemical Biology
DOI
: 10.1016/j.chembiol.2021.07.015
: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S245194562100355X