Estimation of the minimum mRNA splicing error rate in vertebrates

• mRNA splicing is ubiquitous in vertebrates but splicing error rate is unknown.
• Frequency of aberrant transcripts varies widely among loci, tissues, and species.
• Several processes contribute to aberrant transcript generation.
• Minimum error rate in vertebrates is ∼0.1% aberrant transcripts per intron.

The majority of protein coding genes in vertebrates contain several introns that are removed by the mRNA splicing machinery. Errors during splicing can generate aberrant transcripts and degrade the transmission of genetic information thus contributing to genomic instabili