Fig. 6

Model of the impact of SNORD2 folding on the processing of its host gene. The SNORD2 sequence in the EIF4A2 pre-mRNA can fold in a canonical way to produce the mature SNORD2, resulting in EIF4A2 transcripts including exon 4 and the production of EIF4A2 proteins. Alternatively, SNORD2 can fold into its downstream intronic region, masking the branch point of intron 3, which will lead to the exclusion of exon 4. Transcripts lacking exon 4 contain a premature stop codon in exon 5 and will be rapidly targeted and degraded by the NMD pathway [45]