Germline mutations of the hMSH2 gene are responsible for many cases of hereditary nonpolyposis colorectal cancer. While screening for hMSH2 gene mutations in hereditary nonpolyposis colorectal cancer kindreds, we observed that a previously reported germline mutation is in fact a common, alternatively spliced variant in the population. Using RT-PCR and the protein truncation test, the hMSH2 exon...

Hepatitis B virus (HBV) is the smallest DNA virus and the major cause of acute and chronic hepatitis. The 3.2 kb HBV viral genome generates four major species of unspliced viral transcript as well as several alternatively spliced RNAs. A 2.2 kb singly-spliced RNA is the most abundant spliced RNA and is widely expressed among all HBV genotypes. The expression of the singly-spliced RNA, as well a...

The importance of alternative splicing in many genomes has raised interesting questions about its role in evolution. We analyzed 13 384 full-length transcript isoforms from human and 2227 isoforms from mouse to identify sequences containing premature termination codons (PTCs) that are likely targets of mRNA nonsense-mediated decay. We found that alternatively spliced isoforms have a much higher...

The K8 locus in Kaposi's sarcoma-associated herpesvirus (KSHV) is syntenic with the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) BZLF (Z) locus and expresses three alternatively spliced transcripts. The fully spliced transcript encodes K-bZIP, the KSHV homologue of the EBV immediate-early transcriptional transactivator Z. Here we show that despite the presence of alternatively spliced transcripts, the protein from...

Human endogenous retrovirus K (HERV-K) is the most intact retrovirus in the human genome. There are multiple full-length or near full-length HERV-K proviruses in it. To analyze which HERV-K proviruses give rise to viral transcripts in cancer cell lines and to test whether ionizing radiation can alter the levels of HERV-K transcripts, RT-PCR studies were undertaken using multiple human cancer ce...