Introduction to cotranscriptional RNA splicing.

The discovery that many intron-containing genes can be cotranscriptionally spliced has led to an increased understanding of how splicing and transcription are intricately intertwined. Cotranscriptional splicing has been demonstrated in a number of different organisms and has been shown to play roles in coordinating both constitutive and alternative splicing. The nature of cotranscriptional splicing suggests that changes in transcription can dramatically affect splicing, and new evidence suggests that splicing can, in turn, influence transcription. In this chapter, we discuss the mechanisms and consequences of cotranscriptional splicing and introduce some of the tools used to measure this process.