TY - JOUR T1 - Splicing-dependent NMD requires Prp17 in <em>Saccharomyces cerevisiae</em> JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/149245 SP - 149245 AU - Jikai Wen AU - Laetitia Marzi AU - Jianming Wang AU - Jinxin Ye AU - Saverio Brogna Y1 - 2017/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/06/12/149245.abstract N2 - Nonsense mediated mRNA decay (NMD) denotes that mutations, or errors in gene expression which introduce a premature translation termination codon (PTC), can decrease mRNA level in any organism. Remarkably, whether a PTC will lead to NMD often depends on the presence of a downstream intron, splicing of which marks a spliced mRNA by deposition of the exon junction complex (EJC) in mammalian cells. Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which has introns only in 5% of its genes and lacks proteins essential for the EJC assembly was not expected to undergo splicing-dependent NMD. Conversely, here we report that the presence of an intron can enhance NMD in a distance-dependent manner regardless of whether it is positioned before or after a PTC in this organism. Following screening for genes that might be specifically involved in splicing-dependent NMD, we identified splicing factor Prp17. Our data indicate that the coupling between splicing and translation is a universal feature of eukaryotes, and envisage that Prp17, which, notably, co-sediments with monosomal mRNA, may link splicing to NMD by bridging the spliceosome with the ribosome. ER -