Functional coordination of alternative splicing in the mammalian central nervous system

Using a quantitative alternative splicing (AS) microarray platform, we have identified a large number of widely-expressed mouse genes containing single or coordinated-pairs of alternative exons that are spliced in a tissue-regulated fashion. The majority of these AS events display differential regulation in central nervous system (CNS) tissues. Approximately half of the corresponding genes have neural-specific functions and operate in common processes and interconnected pathways. Differential regulation of AS in the CNS tissues correlates strongly with a set of mostly new motifs that are predominantly located in the intron and constitutive exon sequences neighboring CNS-regulated alternative exons. Different subsets of these motifs are correlated with either increased inclusion or increased exclusion of alternative exons in CNS-tissues, relative to the other profiled tissues. Keywords: Alternative splicing Hybridizations were performed in duplicate with fluor reversal: that is, each mRNA sample was examined in duplicate, once in the Cy3 channel and once in the Cy5 channel, on separate arrays. Each array was hybridized with two samples simultaneously, each from an individual tissue.