American Physiological Society, American Journal of Physiology: Cell Physiology, 6(301), p. C1445-C1457, 2011
DOI: 10.1152/ajpcell.00304.2010
Georg Thieme Verlag, Zeitschrift für Gastroenterologie, 08(48), 2010
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Nitric oxide (NO) induces relaxation of colonic smooth muscle cells predominantly by cGMP/cGMP-dependent protein kinase I (cGKI)-induced phosphorylation of the inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate receptor (IP3R)-associated cGMP kinase substrate (IRAG), to block store-dependent calcium signaling. In the present study we analyzed the structure and function of the human IRAG/MRVI1 gene. We describe four unique first exon variants transcribed from individual promoters in diverse human tissues. Tissue-specific alternative splicing with exon skipping and alternative splice donor and acceptor site usage further increases diversity of IRAG mRNA variants that encode for NH2- and COOH-terminally truncated proteins. At the functional level, COOH-terminally truncated IRAG variants lacking both the cGKI phosphorylation and the IP3RI interaction site counteract cGMP-mediated inhibition of calcium transients and relaxation of human colonic smooth muscle cells. Since COOH-terminally truncated IRAG mRNA isoforms are widely expressed in human tissues, our results point to an important role of IRAG variants as negative modulators of nitric oxide/cGKI-dependent signaling. The complexity of alternative splicing of the IRAG gene impressively demonstrates how posttranscriptional processing generates functionally distinct proteins from a single gene.