title: High-throughput quantification of splicing isoforms.
abstract: Most human messenger RNAs (mRNAs) are alternatively spliced and many exhibit disease-specific splicing patterns. However, the contribution of most splicing events to the development and maintenance of human diseases remains unclear. As the contribution of alternative splicing events to diagnosis and prognosis is becoming increasingly recognized, it becomes important to develop precise methods to quantify the abundance of these isoforms in clinical samples. Here we present a pipeline for real-time PCR annotation of splicing events (RASE) that allows accurate identification of a large number of splicing isoforms in human tissues. The RASE automatically designed specific primer pairs for 81% of all alternative splicing events in the NCBI build 36 database. Experimentally, the majority of the RASE designed primers resulted in isoform-specific amplification suitable for quantification in human cell lines or in formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded (FFPE) RNA extract. Using this pipeline it is now possible to rapidly identify splicing isoform signatures in different types of human tissues or to validate complete sets of data generated by microarray expression profiling and deep sequencing techniques.
authors.affiliation: Universite de Sherbrooke, Departement de Microbiologie et d'Infectiologie Sherbrooke, Quebec J1H 5N4, Canada.
authors.forename: Jean-Philippe
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Brosseau
authors.forename: Jean-François
authors.initials: JF
authors.lastname: Lucier
authors.forename: Elvy
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Lapointe
authors.forename: Mathieu
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Durand
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Gendron
authors.forename: Julien
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Gervais-Bird
authors.forename: Karine
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Tremblay
authors.forename: Jean-Pierre
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Perreault
authors.forename: Sherif Abou
authors.initials: SA
authors.lastname: Elela
mesh_terms: D017398:Alternative Splicing; D001483:Base Sequence; D017931:DNA Primers / Q000235:genetics; D006801:Humans; D016133:Polymerase Chain Reaction / Q000379:methods*; D022821:RNA Splice Sites; D012333:RNA, Messenger / Q000032:analysis* / Q000235:genetics*
chemical_list: D017931:DNA Primers; D022821:RNA Splice Sites; D012333:RNA, Messenger