The role of acetylation in the RNA recognition motif of SRSF5 protein

Acetylation is emerging as an important posttranslational modification, which is found in thousands of proteins in eukaryotes, as well as prokaryotes. Global proteomic studies implicated acetylation in regulation of various processes like metabolism, gene expression, cell cycle or aging to name a few. In this work I set out to investigate the role of acetylation of a splicing regulatory protein SRSF5 by creating mutations in its acetylation site. I tested the hypothesis that acetylation influences SRSF5 interaction with RNA. I expressed acetylation-mimicking (Q) or non-acetylable (R) mutant of SRSF5 in HeLa cells and measured their interaction with RNA by RNA immunoprecipitation or in vitro by fluorescence anisotropy. Both approaches agreed that mutants interact with RNA less than the wild type protein and Q mutant bound RNA weaker than R mutant. I did not detect further difference in localization or dynamics among the proteins in vivo, which suggests that difference caused by weakened interaction of mutants with RNA was outweighed by other factors influencing SRSF5 behaviour, probably protein-protein interactions. I also found out that mutant SRSF5 proteins do not have a dominant effect on splicing of fibronectin alternative EDB exon. The data obtained give an indirect evidence for the hypothesis that..