title: Genome-wide analysis of alternative splicing during dendritic cell response to a bacterial challenge.
abstract: The immune system relies on the plasticity of its components to produce appropriate responses to frequent environmental challenges. Dendritic cells (DCs) are critical initiators of innate immunity and orchestrate the later and more specific adaptive immunity. The generation of diversity in transcriptional programs is central for effective immune responses. Alternative splicing is widely considered a key generator of transcriptional and proteomic complexity, but its role has been rarely addressed systematically in immune cells. Here we used splicing-sensitive arrays to assess genome-wide gene- and exon-level expression profiles in human DCs in response to a bacterial challenge. We find widespread alternative splicing events and splicing factor transcriptional signatures induced by an E. coli challenge to human DCs. Alternative splicing acts in concert with transcriptional modulation, but these two mechanisms of gene regulation affect primarily distinct functional gene groups. Alternative splicing is likely to have an important role in DC immunobiology because it affects genes known to be involved in DC development, endocytosis, antigen presentation and cell cycle arrest.
authors.affiliation: Instituto de Medicina Molecular, Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal.
authors.forename: Raquel
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Rodrigues
authors.forename: Ana Rita
authors.initials: AR
authors.lastname: Grosso
authors.forename: Luís
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Moita
mesh_terms: D017398:Alternative Splicing / Q000235:genetics*; D003713:Dendritic Cells / Q000276:immunology* / Q000382:microbiology*; D004926:Escherichia coli / Q000276:immunology*; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling; D015894:Genome, Human / Q000235:genetics*; D006801:Humans; D020411:Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis; D020033:Protein Isoforms / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D016601:RNA-Binding Proteins / Q000378:metabolism; D060888:Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction; D015203:Reproducibility of Results
chemical_list: D020033:Protein Isoforms; D016601:RNA-Binding Proteins