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Updated: Jul 19, 2026

Detection of Alternative Splicing During Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition
Published on: October 9, 2014
Transgenic alternative-splicing reporters reveal tissue-specific expression profiles and regulation mechanisms in
Hidehito Kuroyanagi1, Tetsuo Kobayashi, Shohei Mitani
1School of Biomedical Science, Tokyo Medical and Dental University, Yushima, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8510, Japan. kuroyana.end@tmd.ac.jp
Abstract:
Alternative splicing of pre-mRNAs allows multicellular organisms to create a huge diversity of proteomes from a finite number of genes. But extensive studies in vitro or in cultured cells have not fully explained the regulation mechanisms of tissue-specific or developmentally regulated alternative splicing in living organisms. Here we report a transgenic reporter system that allows visualization of expression profiles of mutually exclusive exons in Caenorhabditis elegans. Reporters for egl-15 exons 5A and 5B showed tissue-specific profiles, and we isolated mutants defective in the tissue specificity. We identified alternative-splicing defective-1 (asd-1), encoding a new RNA-binding protein of the evolutionarily conserved Fox-1 family, as a regulator of the egl-15 reporter. Furthermore, an asd-1;fox-1 double mutant was defective in the expression of endogenous egl-15 (5A) and phenocopied egl-15 (5A) mutant. This transgenic reporter system can be a powerful experimental tool for the comprehensive study of expression profiles and regulation mechanisms of alternative splicing in metazoans.
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