Alternative splicing and protein function

Background: Alternative splicing is a major mechanism of generating protein diversity in higher eukaryotes. Although at least half, and probably more, of mammalian genes are alternatively spliced, it was not clear, whether the frequency of alternative splicing is the same in different functional categories. The problem is obscured by uneven coverage of genes by ESTs and a large number of artifacts in the EST data. Results: We have developed a method that generates possible mRNA isoforms for human genes contained in the EDAS database, taking into account the effects of nonsense-mediated decay and translation initiation rules, and a procedure for offsetting the effects of uneven EST coverage. Then we computed the number of mRNA isoforms for genes from different functional categories. Genes encoding ribosomal proteins and genes in the category "Small GTPase-mediated signal transduction" tend to have fewer isoforms than the average, whereas the genes in the category "DNA re...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2005
• Where: BMCBI
• Authors: A. D. Neverov, Irena I. Artamonova, Ramil N. Nurtdinov, Dmitrij Frishman, Mikhail S. Gelfand, Andrey A. Mironov
• Keywords: Alternative Splicing, BMCBI 2005, Isoforms, Proteins