Splicing accuracy varies across human introns, tissues and age

Output Details

Alternative splicing impacts most multi-exonic human genes. Inaccuracies during this process may have an important role in ageing and disease. Here, we investigated mis-splicing using RNA-sequencing data from ~14K control samples and 42 human body sites, focusing on split reads partially mapping to known transcripts in annotation. We show that mis-splicing occurs at different rates across introns and tissues and that these splicing inaccuracies are primarily affected by the abundance of core components of the spliceosome assembly and its regulators. Using publicly available data on short-hairpin RNA-knockdowns of numerous spliceosomal components and related regulators, we found support for the importance of RNA-binding proteins in mis-splicing. We also demonstrated that age is positively correlated with mis-splicing, and it affects genes implicated in neurodegenerative diseases. This in-depth characterisation of mis-splicing can have important implications for our understanding of the role of splicing inaccuracies in human disease and the interpretation of long-read RNA-sequencing data.
Tags
  • Human
  • Intron
  • Mis-splicing
  • Neurodegenerative disorders
  • Regulators
  • RNA binding proteins
  • RNA bulk
  • RNA-knockdown
  • RNA-seq
  • Spliceosome
  • Tissue

Meet the Authors

  • Sonia García-Ruiz, PhD

    Key Personnel: Team Hardy

    University College London

  • David Zhang, MSc

    Key Personnel: Team Wood

    University College London

  • Emil Gustavsson, PhD

    Key Personnel: Team Wood Team Hardy

    University College London

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    Guillermo Rocamora-Perez

  • Melissa Grant-Peters

    Key Personnel: Team Wood

    University College London

  • User avatar fallback logo

    Aine Fairbrother-Browne, MSc

    Key Personnel: Team Hardy Team Wood

    University College London

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    Regina H. Reynolds

  • Jonathan Brenton, PhD

    Key Personnel: Team Hardy Team Wood

    University College London

  • Ana Luisa Gil Martinez, PhD

    Key Personnel: Team Hardy

    University College London

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    Zhongbo Chen

  • Donald Rio, PhD

    Lead PI (Core Leadership): Team Rio

    University of California, Berkeley

  • Juan A. Botía, PhD

    Key Personnel: Team Hardy Team Wood

    University of Murcia

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    Sebastian Guelfi

  • User avatar fallback logo

    Leonardo Collado-Torres

  • Mina Ryten

    Co-PI (Core Leadership): Team Hardy Team Wood

    University College London