Dissecting the human spliceosome through bioinformatics and proteomics approaches.
The precise excision of introns from mRNAs is executed by the spliceosome, a cellular machinery composed by five small nuclear RNAs and hundreds of proteins. In the last few years, several groups have used proteomics and computational biology tools to characterize the components of the human spliceosome. These reports have identified basically all known splicing factors and several new proteins. The composition of the human spliceosome confirms the link between splicing and other steps in gene expression. Here we comment on these reports and discuss the perspectives for the coming years.
Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, São Paulo Branch, Rua Prof. Antonio Prudente 109, 4 andar São Paulo, 01509-010, SP, Brazil.
Graziela Mie
GM
Peres Lopes
Sandro Jose
SJ
de Souza
D017398:Alternative Splicing; D019295:Computational Biology; D006801:Humans; D040901:Proteomics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D017381:Spliceosomes / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism*