Abstract
Cajal bodies (CBs), first identified in the early 20th century, are classic nuclear structures organized primarily by the protein coilin. Although CBs have long been implicated in snRNA modification and maturation, their precise roles in mice remain unclear. Here, we revisit the functions of CBs by using genome editing to generate mice that lack nearly the entire coilin protein, retaining only the first seven amino acids. Mass-spectrometry analyses showed reduced 2′- O -methylation of U2 snRNA in coilin mutant liver; however, these reductions had minimal impact on overall gene expression and pre-mRNA splicing patterns. Additionally, detailed analysis recapitulated previously reported testicular size reductions and newly revealed decreased proportions of high-quality sperm. We also identified novel coilin-containing condensates distinct from genuine CBs in the nuclear pocket of elongating spermatids. Our findings implicate that coilin orchestrates membraneless organelles in various compartments, playing multifunctional roles beyond classical CB formation.
Full text
1,162 characters
· extracted from
oa-doi-fallback
· click to expand
Abstract
Cajal bodies (CBs), first identified in the early 20th century, are classic nuclear structures organized primarily by the protein coilin. Although CBs have long been implicated in snRNA modification and maturation, their precise roles in mice remain unclear. Here, we revisit the functions of CBs by generating mice lacking nearly the entire coilin protein via genome editing. Mass-spectrometry analyses showed reduced 2′-O-methylation of U2 snRNA in coilin mutant liver; however, these reductions had minimal impact on overall gene expression and pre-mRNA splicing patterns. Additionally, detailed analysis recapitulated previously reported testicular size reductions and newly revealed decreased proportions of high-quality sperm. We also identified novel coilin-containing condensates distinct from genuine CBs in nuclear pocket of elongating spermatids. Our findings implicate that coilin orchestrates membraneless organelles in various compartments, playing multifunctional roles beyond classical CB formation.
Competing Interest Statement
The authors have declared no competing interest.
Footnotes
fixed typos and replaced wrongly attached figures
Text is read by the "Ask this paper" AI Q&A widget below.
Extraction quality varies by source — PMC NXML preserves structure
cleanly, OA-HTML may include some navigation residue, and OA-PDF can
have broken hyphenation. The publisher copy
(via DOI)
is the canonical version.