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Updated: Aug 19, 2026

Using the E1A Minigene Tool to Study mRNA Splicing Changes
Published on: April 22, 2021
Regulation of splicing: the importance of being translatable
Elana Miriami1, Ruth Sperling, Joseph Sperling
1Department of Genetics, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem 91904, Israel.
Abstract:
RNA sequences that conform to the consensus sequence of 5' splice sites but are not used for splicing occur frequently in protein coding genes. Mutational analyses have shown that suppression of splicing at such latent sites may be dictated by the necessity to maintain an open reading frame in the mRNA. Here we show that stop codon frequency in introns having latent 5' splice sites is significantly greater than that of introns lacking such sites and significantly greater than the expected occurrence by chance alone. Both observations suggest the occurrence of a general mechanism that recognizes the mRNA reading frame in the context of pre-mRNA.
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