Amount of RNA secondary structure required to induce an alternative splice.

AUTOR(ES)

Solnick, D

RESUMO

We set up an alternative splicing system in vitro in which the relative amounts of two spliced RNAs, one containing and the other lacking a particular exon, were directly proportional to the length of an inverted repeat inserted into the flanking introns. We then used the system to measure the effect of intramolecular complementarity on alternative splicing in vivo. We found that an alternative splice was induced in vivo only when the introns contained more than approximately 50 nucleotides of perfect complementarity, that is, only when the secondary structure was much more stable than most if not all possible secondary structures in natural mRNA precursors. We showed further that intron insertions containing long complements to splice sites and a branch point inhibited splicing in vitro but not in vivo. These results raise the possibility that in cells most pre-mRNA secondary structures either are not maintained long enough to influence splicing choices, or never form at all.

Documentos Relacionados

• Secondary structure of splice sites in adenovirus mRNA precursors.
• Small amplified RNA-SAGE: an alternative approach to study transcriptome from limiting amount of mRNA
• An RNA secondary structure workbench.
• A retroviral RNA secondary structure required for efficient initiation of reverse transcription.
• SpliceInfo: an information repository for mRNA alternative splicing in human genome