Detailed close-ups and the big picture of spliceosomes

The spliceosome is the huge macromolecular assembly responsible for the removal of introns from pre-mRNA transcripts. The size and complexity of this dynamic cellular machine dictate that structural analysis of the spliceosome is best served by a combination of techniques. Electron microscopy is providing a more global, albeit less detailed, view of spliceosome assemblies. X-ray crystallographers and NMR spectroscopists are steadily reporting more atomic resolution structures of individual spliceosome components and fragments. Increasingly, structures of these individual pieces in complex with binding partners are yielding insights into the interfaces that hold the entire spliceosome assembly together. Although the information arising from the various structural studies of splicing machinery has not yet fully converged into a complete model, we can expect that a detailed understanding of spliceosome structure will arise at the juncture of structural and computational modeling methods.