Molecular Biology
C.F. Lesser, C. Guthrie,"Mutations in U6 snRNA that alter splice-site specificity--implications for the active site," Science, 262:1982-88, 1993. Cammie Lesser (Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, School of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco): "Nuclear pre-mRNA splicing is the process by which the introns- -the noncoding portions of precursor mRNAs--are removed and the coding sequences called exons are ligated
The Scientist Staff
Nov 13, 1994
Cammie Lesser (Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, School of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco): "Nuclear pre-mRNA splicing is the process by which the introns- -the noncoding portions of precursor mRNAs--are removed and the coding sequences called exons are ligated together. This process is mediated by the spliceosome, a cellular complex composed of both RNA and proteins. A major challenge has been determining how the components of the spliceosome identify the exact intron/exon boundaries (splice-sites) and then juxtapose the catalytic residues of the spliceosome with these boundaries. The information content at the splice sites is very limited, because there is a serious problem in maintaining the fidelity of the reaction.
"Early studies demonstrated that one of the RNAs--the small nuclear RNA (snRNA) U1--base-pairs with the 5_ splice site. This RNA-RNA interaction is...