title: Quantitative regulation of alternative splicing in evolution and development.
abstract: Alternative splicing (AS) is a widespread mechanism with an important role in increasing transcriptome and proteome diversity by generating multiple different products from the same gene. Evolutionary studies of AS have focused primarily on the conservation of alternatively spliced sequences or of the AS pattern of those sequences itself. Less is known about the evolution of the regulation of AS, but several studies, working from different perspectives, have recently made significant progress. Here, we categorize the different levels of AS evolution, and summarize the studies on evolution of AS regulation, which point to a high level of evolutionary conservation of the regulation of AS events conserved between related species. This suggests that the quantitative regulation of AS is an intrinsic part of AS function. We discuss the potential role of changes in developmental regulation of AS as an additional layer in complex gene regulatory networks and in the emergence of genetic novelties.
authors.affiliation: Departament de Genètica, and Institut de Biomedicina (IBUB), Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain. mirimia@gmail.com
authors.forename: Manuel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Irimia
authors.forename: Jakob L
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Rukov
authors.forename: Scott W
authors.initials: SW
authors.lastname: Roy
authors.forename: Jeppe
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Vinther
authors.forename: Jordi
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Garcia-Fernandez
mesh_terms: D017398:Alternative Splicing; D000818:Animals; D017173:Caenorhabditis elegans; D015509:Developmental Biology / Q000379:methods; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D005091:Exons; D006801:Humans; D007438:Introns; D051379:Mice; D008957:Models, Genetic; D009154:Mutation; D012326:RNA Splicing; D012333:RNA, Messenger / Q000378:metabolism; D013045:Species Specificity
chemical_list: D012333:RNA, Messenger