Infidelity in the structure of ectopic transcripts: a novel exon in lymphocyte dystrophin transcripts

Ectopic (or "illegitimate") transcripts have recently become popular as a means of facilitating the study of transcripts normally considered to have a pattern of expression restricted to one or a few tissues. It has been generally assumed that the structure of an ectopic transcript faithfully represents that of its tissue-specific counterpart. We describe here the inclusion of a novel exon in 50% of ectopic dystrophin transcripts from human peripheral blood lymphocytes. The novel sequence resembles a conserved region in the 3' untranslated region of members of the carcinoembryonic antigen gene family and lies within the first intron of the human dystrophin gene. This constitutes a significant departure from the expected in vivo splicing behaviour in an ectopic transcript and suggests that there may be exceptions to the assumption that ectopic transcripts are processed in a similar way to their tissue-specific counterparts.