Rader, Stephen (University of Northern British Columbia)

Purpose

From the creation of an mRNA transcript to the degradation of the protein it encodes, there are a multitude of regulatory steps in eukaryotic gene expression. One essential step in this process is pre-mRNA splicing, in which interrupting sequences are removed from nascent transcripts. Through alternative inclusion of mRNA regions, pre-mRNA splicing dramatically broadens the range of proteins encoded by a particular gene, and provides additional regulatory layers that allow a cell to respond to environmental conditions, developmental signals, and cell cycle progression. Our understanding of this process, however, comes from a very limited range of model organisms with a strong taxonomic bias towards metazoans and fungi.