Linkage, association and expression studies previously pointed to the human QKI, KH domain containing, RNA-binding (QKI) as a candidate gene for schizophrenia. Functional studies of the mouse orthologue Qk focused mainly on its role in oligodendrocyte development and myelination, while its function in astroglia remained unexplored. Here, we show that QKI is highly expressed in human primary ast...

Bovine lactoferrin (bLF) is a member of the transferrin family; it plays an important role in the innate immune response. We identified novel splice variants of the bLF gene in mastitis-infected and healthy cows. Reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and clone sequencing analysis were used to screen the splice variants of the bLF gene in the mammary gland, spleen and liv...

BACKGROUND Approximately 75% of clinically definite long QT syndrome (LQTS) cases are caused by mutations in the KCNQ1, KCNH2 and SCN5A genes. Of these mutations, a small proportion (3.2-9.2%) are predicted to affect splicing. These mutations present a particular challenge in ascribing pathogenicity. METHODS Here we report an analysis of the transcriptional consequences of two mutations, one ...

The generation of potent opioid analgesics that lack the side effects of traditional opioids may be possible by targeting truncated splice variants of the μ-opioid receptor. μ-Opioids act through GPCRs that are generated from the Oprm1 gene, which undergoes extensive alternative splicing. The most abundant set of Oprm1 variants encode classical full-length 7 transmembrane domain (7TM) μ-opioid ...

CONTEXT Thyroid cancer incidence has increased significantly during the past decades and is the most common type of endocrine malignancy. Many factors in thyroid cancers were studied as independent predictors of a poor prognosis. OBJECTIVE The objective of the study was to evaluate survivin expression - BIRC5 and its splice variants: survivin delta Ex3 and survivin 2B in benign and malignant ...

Of the >40 alternative and aberrant splice variants of MDM2 that have been described to date, the majority has lost both the well-characterized nuclear localization signal (NLS1) and the nuclear export signal (NES) sequence. Because cellular localization of proteins provides insight regarding their potential function, we determined the localization of three different MDM2 splice variants. The s...

Cyclin E, a G(1) cyclin, is overexpressed and present in low molecular weight (LMW) isoforms in breast cancer cells and tumor tissues. In this study we have examined the possibility that the shortened mRNA splice variants could give rise to tumor-specific cyclin E LMW proteins. We used the Splice Capture method to identify, enumerate and isolate known spliced mRNAs and to look for previously un...