Investigation of tissue-specific human orthologous alternative splice events in pig.
Alternative splicing of pre-mRNA can contribute to differences between tissues or cells either by regulating gene expression or creating proteins with various functions encoded by one gene. The number of investigated alternative splice events in pig has so far been limited. In this study we have investigated alternative splice events detected in humans, in orthologous pig genes. A total of 17 genes with predicted exon skipping events were selected for further studies. The splice events for the selected genes were experimentally verified using real-time quantitative PCR analysis (qPCR) with splice-specific primers in 19 different tissues. The same splice variants as reported in humans were detected in 15 orthologous pig genes, however, the expression pattern predicted in the in silico analyses was only experimentally verified in a few cases. The results support the findings that splice events resulting in preservation of open reading frame are indicative of a functional significance of the splice variants of the gene.
Faculty of Life Sciences, Division of Genetics and Bioinformatics, Department of Basic Animal and Veterinary Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Frederiksberg C, Denmark.
Ann-Britt
AB
Nygard
Claus B
CB
Jørgensen
Susanna
S
Cirera
Merete
M
Fredholm
D017398:Alternative Splicing; D000818:Animals; D003198:Computer Simulation; D020224:Expressed Sequence Tags; D006801:Humans; D009928:Organ Specificity; D016133:Polymerase Chain Reaction; D020033:Protein Isoforms / Q000096:biosynthesis / Q000235:genetics*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA; D013045:Species Specificity; D013552:Swine / Q000235:genetics*
D020033:Protein Isoforms