Latest Alternative splicing Stories
Research on the genetic defect that causes myotonic muscular dystrophy has revealed that the mutation disrupts an array of metabolic pathways in muscle cells through its effects on two key proteins. A study published in Nature Structural & Molecular Biology shows that the loss of a single protein accounts for most of the molecular abnormalities associated with the disease, while loss of a second protein also seems to play an important role.Each of the affected proteins interacts with an...
Understanding and overcoming "˜the Warburg Effect' A team of scientists led by Professor Adrian Krainer, Ph.D., of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory has discovered molecular factors in cancer cells that boost the production of an enzyme that helps alter the cells' glucose metabolism. The altered metabolic state, called the Warburg effect, promotes extremely rapid cell proliferation and tumor growth.Discovered eighty years ago by Nobel Prize-winning scientist Otto Warburg, this altered...
The sequences of nonsense DNA that interrupt genes could be far more important to the evolution of genomes than previously thought, according to a recent Science report by Indiana University Bloomington and University of New Hampshire biologists.Their study of the model organism Daphnia pulex (water flea) is the first to demonstrate the colonization of a single lineage by "introns," as the interrupting sequences are known. The scientists say introns are inserted into the genome far...
University of Georgia scientists looking to understand the genetic mechanisms of plant defense and growth have found for the first time in plants an inverse relationship between gene duplication and alternative splicing. The finding has implications for diversity not only in plants, but in animals and humans.The research will be published online in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences."This inverse relationship has been previously reported in animals," said...
Emotions, popularly seated in the heart, shift with the alternative stimuli of love, hate and emotion.The developing heart requires another kind of shift. The proteins that prompt alternative splicing "“ the mechanism by which one gene can generate a host of proteins "“ must also be dynamic, said a group of researchers including those at Baylor College of Medicine in a report that appears in a recent issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.Programming...
The widely-used Affymetrix Whole-Transcript Gene 1.0 ST (sense target) microarray platform, normally used to assay gene expression, can also be utilized to interrogate exon-specific splicing. Research published today in the open access journal BMC Bioinformatics shows scientists how to monitor alternative splicing activity on a genome-wide scale, without investing in new exon microarray technologies.Alternative splicing produces a variety of mRNA transcripts from a single gene by splicing...
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have identified a master switch that might prevent cancer cells from metastasizing from a primary tumor to other organs. The switch is a protein that, when in the "on" position, maintains the normal character of cells that line the surface of organs and body cavities. These epithelial cells are the type of cell from which most solid tumors arise. However, when the switch is turned "off" or absent, epithelial cells acquire...
PARIS, March 16 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- ExonHit Therapeutics (Alternext: ALEHT) today reported the publication in Lancet Oncology of a study conducted by Institut Gustave Roussy, which describes the identification of a deregulated cell function in breast cancer through the analysis of alternative RNA splicing [1]. Study data demonstrate that exons are differently expressed in malignant and benign lesions, and alternative transcripts determine the molecular characteristics of breast...
U1, which guides the cell's RNA splicing machinery, 'slides' one RNA base, explaining a mysterious mutationTwo molecular biologists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory have uncovered important new details about how a gene mutation causes a cellular editing error that results in a devastating disease called pontocerebellar hypoplasia (PCH). The new findings were published online, ahead of print, on January 25th in the journal Nature Structural and Molecular Biology.Typically striking during early...
An international research team led by Tim Nilsen, Ph.D., a professor of medicine and biochemistry and the director of the School of Medicine's Center for RNA Molecular Biology, has discovered an unexpected mechanism governing alternative splicing, the process by which single genes produce different proteins in different situations. The new mechanism suggests that curing the more than half of genetic diseases that are caused by mutations in the genetic code that in turn create mistakes in...
