Inflammation drives alternative first exon usage to regulate immune genes including a novel iron regulated isoform of Aim2

Determining the layers of gene regulation within the innate immune response is critical to our understanding of the cellular responses to infection and dysregulation in disease.

We identified a conserved mechanism of gene regulation in human and mouse via changes in alternative first exon (AFE) usage following inflammation, resulting in changes to isoform usage. Of these AFE events, we identified 50 unannotated transcription start sites (TSS) in mice using Oxford Nanopore native RNA sequencing, one of which is the cytosolic receptor for dsDNA and known inflammatory inducible gene, Aim2. We show that this unannotated AFE isoform of Aim2 is the predominant isoform transcribed during inflammation and contains an iron-responsive element in its 5′UTR enabling mRNA translation to be regulated by iron levels.

This work highlights the importance of examining alternative isoform changes and translational regulation in the innate immune response and uncovers novel regulatory mechanisms of Aim2.