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Updated: Jul 8, 2026

Engineering Artificial Factors to Specifically Manipulate Alternative Splicing in Human Cells
Published on: April 26, 2017
Site-specific modification of pre-mRNA: the 2'-hydroxyl groups at the splice sites
1Center for Cancer Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge 02139.
Abstract:
A simple and efficient method for synthesizing long, site-specifically modified RNA molecules was developed whereby segments of RNA were joined with the use of bacteriophage T4 DNA ligase. A single hydrogen or O-methyl group was substituted for the 2'-hydroxyl group at either splice site of a nuclear pre-messenger RNA substrate. Splicing of the modified pre-messenger RNA's in vitro revealed that, although a 2'-hydroxyl is not absolutely required at either splice site, the 2'-hydroxyl at the 3' splice site is important for the second step of splicing. These results are compared to previous studies of analogous 2'-hydroxyl groups in the self-splicing Tetrahymena group I intron.
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