Two wobble-splicing events affect ING4 protein subnuclear localization and degradation

ING4 (inhibitor of growth 4) is a candidate tumor suppressor gene that is implicated as a repressor of cell growth, angiogenesis, cell spreading and cell migration and can suppress loss of contact inhibition in vitro. Another group and we identified four wobble-splicing isoforms of ING4 generated by alternative splicing at two tandem splice sites, GC(N)7GT and NAGNAG, which caused canonical (GT-AG) and non-canonical (GC-AG) splice site wobbling selection. Expression of the four ING4 wobble-splicing isoforms did not vary significantly in any of the cell lines examined. Here we show that ING4_v1 is translocated to the nucleolus, indicating that ING4 contains an intrinsic nucleolar localization signal. We further demonstrate that the subcellular localization of ING4 is modulated by two wobble-splicing events at the exon 4–5 boundary, causing displacement from the nucleolus to the nucleus. We also observed that ING4 is degraded through the ubiquitin–proteasome pathway and that it is subjected to N-terminal ubiquitination. We demonstrate that nucleolar accumulation of ING4 prolongs its half-life, but lack of nucleolar targeting potentially increases ING4 degradation. Taken together, our data suggest that the two wobble-splicing events at the exon 4–5 boundary influence subnuclear localization and degradation of ING4.