Alternative Splicing May Not Be the Key to Proteome Complexity

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• 作者：Michael L. Tress¹ ; Federico Abascal¹ ; ³ ; Alfonso Valencia¹ ; ² ; ^{valencia@cnio.es}
• 关键词：alternative splicing ; dominant isoforms ; functional isoforms ; homology ; proteomics ; RNA-seq
• 刊名：Trends in Biochemical Sciences
• 出版年：2017
• 出版时间：February 2017
• 年：2017
• 卷：42
• 期：2
• 页码：98-110
• 全文大小：3306 K
• 卷排序：42

文摘

Alternative splicing is commonly believed to be a major source of cellular protein diversity. However, although many thousands of alternatively spliced transcripts are routinely detected in RNA-seq studies, reliable large-scale mass spectrometry-based proteomics analyses identify only a small fraction of annotated alternative isoforms. The clearest finding from proteomics experiments is that most human genes have a single main protein isoform, while those alternative isoforms that are identified tend to be the most biologically plausible: those with the most cross-species conservation and those that do not compromise functional domains. Indeed, most alternative exons do not seem to be under selective pressure, suggesting that a large majority of predicted alternative transcripts may not even be translated into proteins.