Chromatin modifier MTA1 regulates mitotic transition and tumorigenesis by orchestrating mitotic mRNA processing

Dysregulated alternative splicing (AS) driving carcinogenetic mitosis remains poorly understood. Here, we demonstrate that cancer metastasis-associated antigen 1 (MTA1), a well-known oncogenic chromatin modifier, broadly interacts and co-expresses with RBPs across cancers, contributing to cancerous mitosis-related AS. Using developed fCLIP-seq technology, we show that MTA1 binds abundant transcripts, preferentially at splicing-responsible motifs, influencing the abundance and AS pattern of target transcripts. MTA1 regulates the mRNA level and guides the AS of a series of mitosis regulators. MTA1 deletion abrogated the dynamic AS switches of variants for ATRX and MYBL2 at mitotic stage, which are relevant to mitosis-related tumorigenesis. MTA1 dysfunction causes defective mitotic arrest, leads to aberrant chromosome segregation, and results in chromosomal instability (CIN), eventually contributing to tumorigenesis. Currently, little is known about the RNA splicing during mitosis; here, we uncover that MTA1 binds transcripts and orchestrates dynamic splicing of mitosis regulators in tumorigenesis. Dsyregulation of mitosis-related alternative splicing in cancer cells is not well understood. Here, the authors show that cancer metastasis-associated antigen 1 (MTA1), an oncogenic chromatin associated protein, is an RNA-binding protein that regulates the alternative splicing and transcript abundance of mitosis regulators.