Ram Oren, Ast Gil
Department of Human Molecular Genetics and Biochemistry, Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv 69978, Israel.
Trends Genet. 2007 Jan;23(1):5-7. doi: 10.1016/j.tig.2006.10.002. Epub 2006 Oct 30.
Two recent publications illuminate the evolution of alternative splicing, showing that a SR (serine-arginine-rich) protein that regulates alternative splicing in multicellular organisms is also found in a unicellular organism without alternative splicing, in which it can assist in the splicing of weak introns. Moreover, insertion of SR proteins into an organism lacking such proteins can restore the splicing of weak introns. These results imply that SR proteins had already facilitated the splicing of weak introns before the evolution of alternative splicing.
最近的两篇出版物阐明了可变剪接的进化过程，表明一种在多细胞生物中调节可变剪接的富含丝氨酸-精氨酸的（SR）蛋白，在没有可变剪接的单细胞生物中也存在，在这种单细胞生物中它可以协助弱内含子的剪接。此外，将SR蛋白插入缺乏此类蛋白的生物体中，可以恢复弱内含子的剪接。这些结果表明，在可变剪接进化之前，SR蛋白就已经促进了弱内含子的剪接。
