More on the splicing code (Introduction)

by David Turell , Thursday, January 24, 2013, 18:21 (4322 days ago) @ David Turell

The informational exons can be spliced in many ways to create different proteins from the same gene. The authors discuss another level of complexity in the genome, a splicing code in junk DNA:
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> http://www.futurity.org/science-technology/%E2%80%98junk%E2%80%99-dna-hides-assembly-in... view of how alternate splicing with the same gene makes two different species, and might show how speciation happens. But where is the intelligent decision-making source hidden in the setup. That is not yet clear, or is it foredained somehow in the original DNA code?-"To assess alternative splicing patterns as well as transcription levels, both groups performed high-throughput sequencing of messenger RNA. They extracted RNA from a large array of organs of different vertebrate species, including frogs, chickens, primates, and humans. "It's a massive amount of data," said Cooper.
 
Blencowe's team showed that the species-specific alternative splicing changes tended to be driven by differences in the transcripts themselves, which carry a splicing code that guides the splicing machinery—rather than differences in the splicing machinery. For example, human transcripts expressed in mouse cells exhibited human, not mouse, splicing patterns, despite being spliced by mouse machinery.
 
"These are very important papers that provide for the first time a large-scale view of the evolution of alternative splicing in vertebrates," said Brent Graveley, professor of genetics and developmental biology at the University of Connecticut, who was not involved in the research. "They demonstrate how dramatically rapidly alternative splicing evolves, and suggest that it might play a role in speciation.'"-
http://www.the-scientist.com//?articles.view/articleNo/33782/title/Evolution-by-Splicing/