National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA.
Cell. 2011 Jan 7;144(1):16-26. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2010.11.056.
Alternative splicing plays critical roles in differentiation, development, and disease and is a major source for protein diversity in higher eukaryotes. Analysis of alternative splicing regulation has traditionally focused on RNA sequence elements and their associated splicing factors, but recent provocative studies point to a key function of chromatin structure and histone modifications in alternative splicing regulation. These insights suggest that epigenetic regulation determines not only what parts of the genome are expressed but also how they are spliced.
可变剪接在分化、发育和疾病中起着关键作用,是高等真核生物蛋白质多样性的主要来源。对可变剪接调控的分析传统上集中在 RNA 序列元件及其相关剪接因子上,但最近一些发人深省的研究指出染色质结构和组蛋白修饰在可变剪接调控中的关键作用。这些新的认识表明,表观遗传调控不仅决定了基因组的哪些部分被表达,而且决定了它们是如何被剪接的。