Introns are ubiquitous features of all eukaryotic cells. Introns need to be removed from nascent messenger RNA through the process of splicing to produce functional proteins. Here we show that the physical presence of introns in the genome promotes cell survival under starvation conditions. A systematic deletion set of all known introns in budding yeast genes indicates that, in most cases, cells with an intron deletion are impaired when nutrients are depleted. This effect of introns on growth is not linked to the expression of the host gene, and was reproduced even when translation of the host mRNA was blocked. Transcriptomic and genetic analyses indicate that introns promote resistance to starvation by enhancing the repression of ribosomal protein genes that are downstream of the nutrient-sensing TORC1 and PKA pathways. Our results reveal functions of introns that may help to explain their evolutionary preservation in genes, and uncover regulatory mechanisms of cell adaptations to starvation.Transcriptomic and genetic analyses of a deletion set of all known introns in genes of the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae indicate that introns promote resistance to starvation.

中文翻译：

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内含子是细胞饥饿反应的介质

内含子是所有真核细胞的普遍特征。需要通过剪接过程从新生的信使 RNA 中去除内含子以产生功能性蛋白质。在这里，我们表明基因组中内含子的物理存在促进了饥饿条件下的细胞存活。出芽酵母基因中所有已知内含子的系统缺失组表明，在大多数情况下，当营养物质耗尽时，内含子缺失的细胞会受损。内含子对生长的这种影响与宿主基因的表达无关，即使在宿主 mRNA 的翻译被阻断时也会重现。转录组学和遗传分析表明，内含子通过增强对营养感应 TORC1 和 PKA 通路下游的核糖体蛋白基因的抑制来促进对饥饿的抵抗。