Talk:Alternative splicing
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[edit] Alternative promotor mechanism
This is not splicing mechanism. neffk 04:24, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Alternative poly-A mechanism
I have not heard of this... RNA polymerase II and cleavage, polyadenylation specificity factor (CPSF), and cleavage stimulatory factor (CStF) terminate transcription 10-30 nt downstream of the AAUAAA transcription stop sequence. Unless scholarly research can be referenced, I think this should be removed. neffk 04:22, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
[edit] nonfunctional alternative splicing
The article contains no indication that alternatively spliced variants might be anything other than adaptive. It's an issue that's currently in need of emphasis in the field. Alternative splicing can clearly be regulated and adaptive, but essentially all of the diagrammed forms of alternative configurations for a transcript can also occur as a result of abberant transcript processing resulting from exon skipping, incorrect choice of cryptic splice sites, etc. For example, perhaps 1/3 to 1/2 (possibly more) of alternatively spliced variants in humans contain premature termination codons and are almost certainly nonfunctional. Unfortunately, a general belief perhaps uncharitably characterized by "if the cell produces it, it must be good" has led to coupling this mechanism to nonsense-mediated decay in proposals of a new form of gene regulation, when really the most parsimonious explanation is that NMD is just doing its job in removing these incorrectly processed transcripts. Dgscofield 02:51, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
