How Common Is Alternative Splicing in Plants?
Alternative RNA processing enables genes to produce a variety of mRNA and protein products, thus expanding the potential informational content of eukaryotic genomes. Recent evidence indicates a high incidence (up to 60%) of alternative splicing (AS) in the human genome, predominantly in the form of exon skip, whereas a minor form is of the type called intron retention (5% 16%). Plants are thought to exhibit less AS, and analyses of AS in Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) and rice (Oryza sativa) indicate that intron retention is the most common type of AS in these species. Comparison of AS between different species can provide information about the evolution of AS, the conservation of mechanisms that control AS, and its biological consequences for a species. At the gene level, conservation of AS can provide insights into gene function and the evolutionary history of particular genes and their families. Ner-Gaon et al. (pp. 1632 1641) have developed an algorithm (based on EST pairs gapp
