Article ID Journal Published Year Pages File Type
6809262 Neurobiology of Aging 2012 14 Pages PDF
Abstract
Alternative splicing (AS) is a post-transcriptional process that occurs in multiexon genes, and errors in this process have been implicated in many human diseases. Until recently, technological limitations prevented AS from being examined at the genome-wide scale. With the advent of new technologies, including exon arrays and next-generation sequencing (NGS) techniques (e.g., RNA-Seq), a higher resolution view of the human transcriptome is now available. This is particularly applicable in the study of neurodegenerative brain diseases (NBDs), such as Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease, because the brain has the greatest amount of alternative splicing of all human tissues. Although many of the AS events associated with these disorders were initially identified using low-throughput methodologies, genome-wide analysis allows for more in-depth studies, marking a new chapter in transcript exploration. In this review, the latest technologies used to study the transcriptome and the AS genes that have been associated with a number of neurodegenerative brain diseases are discussed.
Related Topics
Life Sciences Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology Ageing
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