Molybdenum is an essential cofactor in many enzymes,
but must first be complexed by molybdopterin, whose synthesis
requires four enzymatic activities. The first two enzymes
of this pathway are encoded by the MOCS1 locus
in humans. We describe here a remarkably well-conserved
novel mRNA splicing phenomenon that produces both an apparently
bicistronic MOCS1AM-OCS1B transcript, as well
as a distinct class of monocistronic transcript. The latter
are created by a variety of splicing mechanisms (alternative
splice donors, alternative splice acceptors, and exon-skipping)
to bypass the normal termination nonsense codon of MOCS1A
resulting in fusion of the MOCS1A and MOCS1B
open reading frames. Therefore, these “no-nonsense”
transcripts encode a single bifunctional protein embodying
both MOCS1A and MOCS1B activities. This coexpression profile
was observed in vertebrates (human, mouse, cow, rabbit,
opossum, and chicken) and invertebrates (fruit fly and
nematode) spanning at least 700 million years of evolution.
Our phylogenetic data also provide evidence that the bicistronic
form of MOCS1 mRNA is likely to only produce MOCS1A
protein and, combined with Northern analyses, suggests
that MOCS1B is translated only as a fusion with MOCS1A.
Taken together, the data presented here demonstrate a very
highly conserved and physiologically relevant dynamic splicing
scheme that profoundly influences the protein-coding potential
of the MOCS1 locus.