Introns are removed from mRNAs by the spliceosome, a type of protein-RNA machinery enriched with intrinsically disordered regions (IDRs). Lacking stable 3D structures, IDRs can adopt diverse conformations interlacing protein and RNA components of the spliceosome and regulating splicing. In this work, we performed a comprehensive bioinformatics analysis of the human spliceosome proteome, revealing that many proteins contain more than 40% disordered residues. Spliceosome IDRs are mainly driven by compositional bias due to an excess of charged and RS-like sequences, with the nature and extent of this disorder being broadly conserved evolutionarily. Additionally, these IDRs are frequent targets of post-translational modifications, especially phosphorylation, and are hot spots for cancer-associated mutations, which have been implicated in different types of cancer. Our results collectively underscore the central role of IDRs in splicing regulation and disease.
Santos et al. (Sat,) studied this question.