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PMID: 16170410 Published · ppublish English Journal Article Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

Protein modularity of alternatively spliced exons is associated with tissue-specific regulation of alternative splicing.

PLoS genetics ·Vol. 1 ·No. 3 ·2005-09-00 ·Pages e34

Xing Y, Lee CJ

Abstract

Recent comparative genomic analysis of alternative splicing has shown that protein modularity is an important criterion for functional alternative splicing events. Exons that are alternatively spliced in multiple organisms are much more likely to be an exact multiple of 3 nt in length, representing a class of "modular" exons that can be inserted or removed from the transcripts without affecting the rest of the protein. To understand the precise roles of these modular exons, in this paper we have analyzed microarray data for 3,126 alternatively spliced exons across ten mouse tissues generated by Pan and coworkers. We show that modular exons are strongly associated with tissue-specific regulation of alternative splicing. Exons that are alternatively spliced at uniformly high transcript inclusion levels or uniformly low levels show no preference for protein modularity. In contrast, alternatively spliced exons with dramatic changes of inclusion levels across mouse tissues (referred to as "tissue-switched" exons) are both strikingly biased to be modular and are strongly conserved between human and mouse. The analysis of different subsets of tissue-switched exons shows that the increased protein modularity cannot be explained by the overall exon inclusion level, but is specifically associated with tissue-switched alternative splicing.

MeSH Terms
Alternative Splicing Animals Conserved Sequence Evolution, Molecular Exons Humans Mice Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis Open Reading Frames Organ Specificity Proteins/genetics Transcription, Genetic
Chemicals
Proteins
Authors & Affiliations
2 authors, click to expand affiliations / ORCID
Xing Yi
Molecular Biology Institute, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California, Los Angeles, California, USA.
Lee Christopher J
Conflict of Interest

Competing interests. The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

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Article Info
Journal
PLoS genetics
Abbr.
PLoS Genet
ISSN
1553-7404
DOI
10.1371/journal.pgen.0010034
Published
2005-09-00
Pages
e34
Language
English
Region
United States
NLM ID
101239074
PMCID
PMC1201369
Subset
IM
Grants
NCRR NIH HHS · U54 RR021813 · United States
NCRR NIH HHS · U54-RR021813 · United States
External Links
PubMed source DOI: 10.1371/journal.pgen.0010034 PMC Full Text View journal details
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