Genome Wide Analysis of the Alternative Splicing Based on Full-Length cDNA Data

One of the striking features in metazoan genomes is that the alternative pre-mRNA splicing is observed in many genes [1] Is was assumed that for a long time that alternative splicing was an exceptional event and, in most cases, a unique combination for the assembly of exons occurs and the sequences of exons were uniquely spliced to an ORF. However, the completion of large genomic sequencing projects reveals that metazoan organisms abundantly use alternative splicing. Indeed, alternative premRNA splicing affects a majority of human gene, and plays an extremely important role in expanding protein diversity [2]. Thus, alternative splicing is currently envisaged to explain the vast disparity between the predicted human genome and the highly diverse proteome. Although several regulation have been characterized for individual cases, it is still unclear that what is characteristic features and mechanisms which related to regulations of alternative splicing events. In this stydy, we investigate various features of alternative splicing events from sequencial, functional, and structural point of view, as a first step to elucidate the mechanism of alternative splicing event. As a result, we find characteristic features of alternative splicing events, and detect relations between alternative splicing events and exon conservations on orthologous genes of human and mouse.