An increasing body of evidence indicates that transcription and splicing are coupled and it is accepted that chromatin organization and DNA modification regulate transcription. Little is known, however, about the cross-talk between chromatin structure and splicing. We continue to examine how RNA polymerase II and DNA modifications mediate cross-talk between chromatin structure and splicing (see...

An increasing body of evidence indicates that transcription and splicing are coupled and it is accepted that chromatin organization and DNA modification regulate transcription. Little is known, however, about the cross-talk between chromatin structure and splicing. We continue to examine how RNA polymerase II and DNA modifications mediate cross-talk between chromatin structure and splicing (see...

An increasing body of evidence indicates that transcription and splicing are coupled and it is accepted that chromatin organization and DNA modification regulate transcription. Little is known, however, about the cross-talk between chromatin structure and splicing. We continue to examine how RNA polymerase II and DNA modifications mediate cross-talk between chromatin structure and splicing (see...

Examples of associations between human disease and defects in pre-messenger RNA splicing/alternative splicing are accumulating. Although many alterations are caused by mutations in splicing signals or regulatory sequence elements, recent studies have noted the disruptive impact of mutated generic spliceosome components and splicing regulatory proteins. This review highlights recent progress in ...

Pre-mRNA splicing is a critical step in gene expression for metazoans. Several viral proteins regulate the splicing of pre-mRNAs through complex interactions with the host cell RNA splicing machinery. Here, we focus on a novel function of HIV-1 Vpr, which selectively inhibits cellular and viral pre-mRNA splicing via interactions with components of the spliceosome complex. This review discusses ...

RNA splicing, a post-transcriptional process necessary to form a mature mRNA, was discovered in the late 1970s. Two different modes of splicing have been defined, that is, constitutive splicing and alternative splicing. Constitutive splicing is the process of removing introns from the premRNA, and joining the exons together to form a mature mRNA. Alternative splicing, on the other hand, is the ...

Many genes in eukaryotic genomes produce multiple transcripts through a variety of molecular mechanisms including alternative splicing. Alternatively spliced transcripts often encode functionally distinct proteins, indicating that gene regulation at this level makes an important contribution to organismal complexity. The multilevel splicing cascade that regulates sex determination and sex-speci...

Many alternative splicing events create RNAs with premature stop codons, suggesting that alternative splicing coupled with nonsense-mediated decay (AS-NMD) may regulate gene expression post-transcriptionally. We tested this idea in mice by blocking NMD and measuring changes in isoform representation using splicing-sensitive microarrays. We found a striking class of highly conserved stop codon-c...

Studies of mammalian splicing factors are often focused on small nuclear ribonucleoproteins or regulatory RNA-binding proteins, such as hnRNP (heterogeneous nuclear ribonucleoprotein) and SR proteins (serine/arginine-rich proteins); however, much less is known about the contribution of DExD/H-box proteins or RNA helicases in mammalian pre-mRNA splicing. The human DEAH-box protein DHX16 [also kn...