What is aberrant splicing?

The proteins encoded by these abnormal transcripts are often truncated or missing domains, thereby altering protein function or conferring new functions altogether. Thus, aberrant splicing regulation has genome-wide effects, potentially altering gene expression in many cancer-associated pathways.

What is aberrant RNA?

Aberrant RNA splicing/mis-splicing in cancer cells could either confer cell survival and growth advantages through altered cell signaling or cell lineage switch or alternatively cause cell death due to mutations of core spliceosome genes or treatment of small molecule inhibitors (e.g. H3B-8800).

What is the difference between constitutive splicing and alternative splicing?

Constitutive splicing is the process of intron removal and exon ligation of the majority of the exons in the order in which they appear in a gene. Alternative splicing is a deviation from this preferred sequence where certain exons are skipped resulting in various forms of mature mRNA.

What determines alternative splicing?

The inclusion or splicing of an alternative exon is therefore determined by combinatorial effects, cellular abundance, and competitive binding between SR activators and hnRNP inhibitors.

Where does mRNA splicing take place?

nucleus
Splicing occurs in the nucleus before the RNA migrates to the cytoplasm. Once splicing is complete, the mature mRNA (containing uninterrupted coding information), is transported to the cytoplasm where ribosomes translate the mRNA into protein.

What triggers alternative splicing?

Alternative splicing is the process of selecting different combinations of splice sites within a messenger RNA precursor (pre-mRNA) to produce variably spliced mRNAs. These multiple mRNAs can encode proteins that vary in their sequence and activity, and yet arise from a single gene.

Is gene splicing possible?

Gene splicing is observed in high proportion of genes. In human cells, about 40-60% of the genes are known to exhibit alternative splicing.

Why is gene splicing used?

Gene splicing technology, therefore, allows researchers to insert new genes into the existing genetic material of an organisms genome so that entire traits, from disease resistance to vitamins, and can be copied from one organism and transferred another.

What happens if splicing does not occur?

Not only do the introns not carry information to build a protein, they actually have to be removed in order for the mRNA to encode a protein with the right sequence. If the spliceosome fails to remove an intron, an mRNA with extra “junk” in it will be made, and a wrong protein will get produced during translation.