Pre-mRNA splicing and its regulation in Caenorhabditis elegans

Alternative splicing is a common mechanism for the generation of multiple isoforms of proteins. It can function to expand the proteome of an organism and can serve as a way to turn off gene expression after transcription. This review focuses on splicing, its regulation and the progress in this field achieved through studies in C. elegans. Recent experiments, including RNA-Seq to uncover and measure the extent of alternative splicing, comparative genomics to identify splicing regulatory elements, and the development of elegant genetic screens using fluorescent reporter constructs, have increased our understanding of the cis-acting sequences that regulate alternative splicing and the trans-acting protein factors that bind to these sequences. The topics covered in this review include constitutive splicing factors, identification of alternatively spliced genes, alternative splicing regulation and the coupling of alternative splicing to nonsense-mediated decay. The significant progress towards uncovering the alternative splicing code in this organism is discussed.