Mayerle Megan, Guthrie Christine
Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94143, USA.
Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94143, USA.
Methods. 2017 Aug 1;125:3-9. doi: 10.1016/j.ymeth.2017.01.006. Epub 2017 Jan 26.
The spliceosome is not a single macromolecular machine. Rather it is a collection of dynamic heterogeneous subcomplexes that rapidly interconvert throughout the course of a typical splicing cycle. Because of this, for many years the only high resolution structures of the spliceosome available were of smaller, isolated protein or RNA components. Consequently much of our current understanding of the spliceosome derives from biochemical and genetic techniques. Now with the publication of multiple, high resolution structures of the spliceosome, some question the relevance of traditional biochemical and genetic techniques to the splicing field. We argue such techniques are not only relevant, but vital for an in depth mechanistic understanding of pre-mRNA splicing.
剪接体不是一个单一的大分子机器。相反,它是一组动态的异质亚复合物,在典型的剪接循环过程中会迅速相互转换。正因如此,多年来可用的剪接体的唯一高分辨率结构是较小的、分离的蛋白质或RNA组分的结构。因此,我们目前对剪接体的许多理解都来自生化和遗传学技术。现在,随着多个剪接体高分辨率结构的发表,一些人质疑传统生化和遗传学技术在剪接领域的相关性。我们认为这些技术不仅相关,而且对于深入理解前体mRNA剪接的机制至关重要。