Ancestral intronic splicing regulatory elements in the SCNα gene family

SCNα genes encode components of voltage-gated sodium channels that are crucial for generating electrical signals in many organisms. Humans have ten paralogous SCNα genes, some of which contain duplicated mutually exclusive exons 5a and 5b (MXE). In reconstructing their evolutionary history, we report multiple unannotated copies of exon 5 in distant species and show that exon 5 duplication likely goes back to a common ancestor of all SCNα genes. We provide evidence from RNA-seq experiments that the nonsense mediated decay (NMD) system plays a role in maintaining mutually exclusive choice of human exons 5a and 5b, and characterize their splicing patterns across tissues and developmental stages. Comparative analysis of nucleotide sequences among paralogs identified two highly conserved complementary intronic elements, IRE1 and IRE2, possibly forming RNA structure that impacts splicing. Indeed, blocking of IRE2 by antisense oligonucleotides significantly changed the 5a/5b ratio without the loss of mutually exclusive pattern. IRE1 and IRE2 are conserved from human to Elephant shark and may represent an ancient, evolutionarily conserved regulatory mechanism that is shared across many SCNα genes. These results demonstrate the power of comparative analysis of paralogs for elucidating conserved splicing regulatory mechanisms.