The splicing-cancer connection

SREBROW, A; KORNBLIHTT, A

JOURNAL OF CELL SCIENCE

Año: 2006 vol. 119 p. 2635 - 2641

0021-9533

Alternative splicing is a crucial mechanism for generating protein diversity. Different splice variants of a given protein can display different and even antagonistic biological functions. Therefore proper control of their expression is required to assure the complex orchestration of cellular phenomena within multicellular organisms. Mutations in splicing cis-acting elements or changes in the activity of regulatory proteins that compromise the accuracy of either constitutive or alternative splicing could have a profound impact on human pathogenesis, in particular in tumour development and progression.