Abstract
Alternative splicing is an important regulatory mechanism to create protein diversity. In order to elucidate possible regulatory elements common to neuron specific exons, we created and statistically analysed a database of exons that are alternatively spliced in neurons. The splice site comparison of alternatively and constitutively spliced exons reveals that some, but not all alternatively spliced exons have splice sites deviating from the consensus sequence, implying diverse patterns of regulation. The deviation from the consensus is most evident at the - 3 position of the 3′ splice site and the + 4 and - 3 position of the 5′ splice site. The nucleotide composition of alternatively and constitutively spliced exons is different, with alternatively spliced exons being more AU rich. We performed overlapping k-tuple analysis to identify common motifs. We found that alternatively and constitutively spliced exons differ in the frequency of several trinucleotides that cannot be explained by the amino acid composition and may be important for splicing regulation.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1515-1526 |
| Number of pages | 12 |
| Journal | Nucleic Acids Research |
| Volume | 22 |
| Issue number | 9 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - May 11 1994 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:We thank D.Horowitz, A.R.Krainer, G.J.Mulligan, R.Fislage, D.Casper, CM.Craft and R.McCombie for helpful discussons and B.Peters for help with computers. This work was supported by an Ausbildungsstipendium of the Deutsche Forschungsgemein-schaft # Sta 399/1-1 to SS, NIH grant RO1-GM43049 to DMH, NIH grant 1KO1 HG00010-02 to MQZ, 1RO1 HG00203-01A1 and DOE # DE-FG02-91ER61190 to TGM. DMH is an Established Investigator of the American Heart Association.
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Genetics