Alternative promoters influence alternative splicing at the genomic level.
BACKGROUND
More and more experiments have shown that transcription and mRNA processing are not two independent events but are tightly coupled to each other. Both promoter and transcription rate were found to influence alternative splicing. More than half of human genes have alternative promoters, but it is still not clear why there are so many alternative promoters and what their biological roles are.


RESULTS
In this study, we explored whether there is a functional correlation between alternative promoters and alternative splicing by a genome-wide analysis of human and mouse genes. We constructed a large data set of genes with alternative promoter and alternative splicing annotations. By analyzing these genes, we showed that genes with alternative promoters tended to demonstrate alternative splicing compare to genes with single promoter, and, genes with more alternative promoters tend to have more alternative splicing variants. Furthermore, transcripts from different alternative promoters tended to splice differently.


CONCLUSIONS
Thus at the genomic level, alternative promoters are positively correlated with alternative splicing.
Institute of Health Sciences, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, People's Republic of China.
Dedong
D
Xin
Landian
L
Hu
Xiangyin
X
Kong
D017398:Alternative Splicing; D018076:DNA, Complementary; D020224:Expressed Sequence Tags; D023281:Genomics; D011401:Promoter Regions, Genetic; D012323:RNA Processing, Post-Transcriptional; D012333:RNA, Messenger / Q000235:genetics
D018076:DNA, Complementary; D012333:RNA, Messenger