title: RNA splicing in human disease and in the clinic.
abstract: Defects at the level of the pre-mRNA splicing process represent a major cause of human disease. Approximately 15-50% of all human disease mutations have been shown to alter functioning of basic and auxiliary splicing elements. These elements are required to ensure proper processing of pre-mRNA splicing molecules, with their disruption leading to misprocessing of the pre-mRNA molecule and disease. The splicing process is a complex process, with much still to be uncovered before we are able to accurately predict whether a reported genomic sequence variant (GV) represents a splicing-associated disease mutation or a harmless polymorphism. Furthermore, even when a mutation is correctly identified as affecting the splicing process, there still remains the difficulty of providing an exact evaluation of the potential impact on disease onset, severity and duration. In this review, we provide a brief overview of splicing diagnostic methodologies, fromin silicobioinformatics approaches to wet labin vitroandin vivosystems to evaluate splicing efficiencies. In particular, we provide an overview of how the latest developments in high-throughput sequencing can be applied to the clinic, and are already changing clinical approaches.
authors.affiliation: Human Development and Health, Faculty of Medicine, University of Southampton, Southampton General Hospital, Tremona Road, Southampton SO16 6YD, U.K.
authors.forename: Diana
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Baralle
authors.affiliation: International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB), 34149 Trieste, Italy buratti@icgeb.org.
authors.forename: Emanuele
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Buratti
mesh_terms: D030342:Genetic Diseases, Inborn / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000209:etiology*; D005821:Genetic Techniques; D006801:Humans; D012326:RNA Splicing
keywords: RT-PCR; alternative splicing; messenger RNA (mRNA); ribonucleic acid (RNA) sequencing; splicing mutations