Plant and Animal Genome XXII Conference

January 10 - 15, 2014

2099

Alternative Splicing

Alterative splicing (AS) is an important post-transcriptional process that has a major effect on gene expression. It can create new protein isoforms and regulate gene expression at the post-transcriptional level. Some AS products have phenotypic effects. AS is common in genes of both plants and animals. Next generation sequencing approaches, especially RNA-seq, recently have been used to detect AS events on a genome-wide scale and the number of genes with known AS has increased considerably, up to over 95% in humans. As the number of transcriptome studies using RNA-seq rapidly increases and more genome sequencing projects progress, our knowledge of AS frequency, patterns, and evolutionary conservation will be advanced considerably. Studies are being done to examine the role of abiotic stress conditions on AS and variable AS patterns in different tissue types, as well as to decipher the mechanisms and functional consequences of AS.