Related Experiment Video
Updated: Aug 21, 2026

Detection of Alternative Splicing During Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition
Published on: October 9, 2014
How did alternative splicing evolve?
1Department of Human Genetics and Molecular Medicine, Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv 69978, Israel. gilast@post.tau.ac.il
Abstract:
Alternative splicing creates transcriptome diversification, possibly leading to speciation. A large fraction of the protein-coding genes of multicellular organisms are alternatively spliced, although no regulated splicing has been detected in unicellular eukaryotes such as yeasts. A comparative analysis of unicellular and multicellular eukaryotic 5' splice sites has revealed important differences - the plasticity of the 5' splice sites of multicellular eukaryotes means that these sites can be used in both constitutive and alternative splicing, and for the regulation of the inclusion/skipping ratio in alternative splicing. So, alternative splicing might have originated as a result of relaxation of the 5' splice site recognition in organisms that originally could support only constitutive splicing.
Related Concept Videos
Alternative RNA Splicing
There are five types of alternative RNA splicing that vary in the ways the pre-mRNA segments are removed or retained in the mature mRNA. The first...
Alternative RNA Splicing
There are five types of alternative RNA splicing that vary in the ways the pre-mRNA segments are removed or retained in the mature mRNA. The first...
RNA Splicing
RNA Splicing
Exon Recombination
Exon shuffling follows “splice frame rules.” Each exon has three reading...
Pre-mRNA Processing: RNA Splicing
