Eukaryotic mRNAs are transcribed as precursors containing their intronic sequences. These are subsequently excised and the exons are spliced together to form mature mRNAs. This process can lead to transcript diversification through the phenomenon of alternative splicing. Alternative splicing can take the form of one or more skipped exons, variable position of intron splicing or intron retention...

Messenger RNAs containing premature stop codons are generally targeted for degradation through nonsense-mediated mRNA decay (NMD). This mechanism degrades aberrant transcripts derived from mutant genes containing nonsense or frameshift mutations. Wild-type genes also give rise to transcripts targeted by NMD. For example, some wild-type genes give rise to alternatively spliced transcripts that a...

SUMMARY Recently, the Ka/Ks ratio test, which assesses the protein-coding potentials of genomic regions based on their non-synonymous to synonymous divergence rates, has been proposed and successfully used in genome annotations of eukaryotes. We systematically performed the Ka/Ks ratio test on 925 transcript-confirmed alternatively spliced exons in the human genome, which we describe in this ma...

We report here the production of a polyclonal antiserum which specifically recognizes an epitope confined to the ultimate 12-residue-long C-terminus of an alternatively spliced transcript of gene 2 encoding the sarcoplasmic reticulum Ca2+ pump in slow skeletal and cardiac muscle. This alternatively spliced transcript was shown to be mainly represented in non-muscle tissues. These antibodies hav...