Npp106p, a Schizosaccharomyces Pombe Nucleoporin Similar to Saccharomyces Cerevisiae Nic96p, Functionally Interacts With Rae1p in Mrna Export

To identify components of the mRNA export machinery in Schizosaccharomyces pombe, a screen was developed to identify mutations that were synthetically lethal with the conditional mRNA export allele rae1-167. Mutations defining three complementation groups were isolated, and here we report the characterization of npp106 (for nuclear pore protein of 106 kDa) This gene encodes a predicted protein that has significant similarity to the Nic96p nucleoporin of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Consistent with Npp106p being a nucleoporin, a functional green fluorescent protein (GFP)-tagged Npp106p localized to the nuclear periphery. In contrast to NIC96, the npp106 gene is not essential. Moreover, a Delta npp106 mutant did not show cytoplasmic mislocalization of a simian virus 40 nuclear localization signal-GFP-LacZ reporter protein, and a fraction of cells had accumulation of poly(A)(+) RNA in the nucleus. A consequence of the synthetic lethality between rae1-167 and npp106-1 was the accumulation of poly(A)(+) RNA in the nucleus when cells were grown under synthetic lethal conditions. In addition to npp106-1, which is a nonsense mutation that truncates the protein at amino acid 292, the Delta npp106 mutation was synthetically lethal with rae1-167, suggesting that the synthetic lethality is a consequence of the loss of a function of npp106. We further demonstrate that a region between amino acids 74 end 348 of Npp106p is required for complementation of the synthetic lethality. These results uncover a potential direct or indirect involvement of Npp106p in mRNA export. [References: 78]

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