• Molecules and Cells
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• v.46 no.1
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• pp.10-20
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• 2023

Antisense oligonucleotide (ASO) technology has become an attractive therapeutic modality for various diseases, including Mendelian disorders. ASOs can modulate the expression of a target gene by promoting mRNA degradation or changing pre-mRNA splicing, nonsense-mediated mRNA decay, or translation. Advances in medicinal chemistry and a deeper understanding of post-transcriptional mechanisms have led to the approval of several ASO drugs for diseases that had long lacked therapeutic options. For instance, an ASO drug called nusinersen became the first approved drug for spinal muscular atrophy, improving survival and the overall disease course. Mutations in the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) gene cause cystic fibrosis (CF). Although Trikafta and other CFTR-modulation therapies benefit most CF patients, there is a significant unmet therapeutic need for a subset of CF patients. In this review, we introduce ASO therapies and their mechanisms of action, describe the opportunities and challenges for ASO therapeutics for CF, and discuss the current state and prospects of ASO therapies for CF.

• The Zoological Society Korea : Newsletter
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.22-30
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• 2000

• Korean Journal of Microbiology
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.1-9
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• 1989

The locations of 5' ends as well as the splicing pattern of viral poly A(-) 19S RNA from monkey cells infected with SV40 were determined by a modification of primer extension method. The 5' end of this RNA mapped at the major cap site at nucleotide residue 325, used most frequently by SV40 late RNAs. The intron from nt.373 to nt.558 was removed as the ordinary cytoplasmic poly A(+) 19S RNA. The 3'end of this RNA was very heterogeneous and distributed over 1 kb upstream of polyadenylation site, as determined by S1 nuclease mapping. The reason for this normally initiated and spliced RNA to accumulate in the nucleus was investigated. In order to test whether the presence of unused 3' splice region on this RNA caused such subcellular distribution, cells were transfected with SV40 mutant KNA containing deletion around 3' splice site. The RNA deleted of 3' splice region accumulated mainly in the cytoplasm. This accumulation did not result from the increased stability of the RNA due to the deletion, since the wild type and mutant RNAs exhibited similar half lives after chase with actinomycin D. Therefore it is likely that the 19S spliced RNA is hindered from being transported into the cytoplasm due to some pre-splicing complexes formed at the unused 3' splice site.

• BMB Reports
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• v.49 no.8
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• pp.405-413
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• 2016

Tau proteins, which stabilize the structure and regulate the dynamics of microtubules, also play important roles in axonal transport and signal transduction. Tau proteins are missorted, aggregated, and found as tau inclusions under many pathological conditions associated with neurodegenerative disorders, which are collectively known as tauopathies. In the adult human brain, tau protein can be expressed in six isoforms due to alternative splicing. The aberrant splicing of tau pre-mRNA has been consistently identified in a variety of tauopathies but is not restricted to these types of disorders as it is also present in patients with non-tau proteinopathies and RNAopathies. Tau mis-splicing results in isoform-specific impairments in normal physiological function and enhanced recruitment of excessive tau isoforms into the pathological process. A variety of factors are involved in the complex set of mechanisms underlying tau mis-splicing, but variation in the cis-element, methylation of the MAPT gene, genetic polymorphisms, the quantity and activity of spliceosomal proteins, and the patency of other RNA-binding proteins, are related to aberrant splicing. Currently, there is a lack of appropriate therapeutic strategies aimed at correcting the tau mis-splicing process in patients with neurodegenerative disorders. Thus, a more comprehensive understanding of the relationship between tau mis-splicing and neurodegenerative disorders will aid in the development of efficient therapeutic strategies for patients with a tauopathy or other, related neurodegenerative disorders.

• BMB Reports
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• v.50 no.8
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• pp.423-428
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• 2017

SRSF2, a Serine-Arginine rich (SR) protein, is a splicing activator that mediates exon inclusion and exclusion events equally well. Here we show SRSF2 directly suppresses intron splicing to suppress cassette exon inclusion in SMN pre-mRNA. Through a serial mutagenesis, we demonstrate that a 10 nt RNA sequence surrounding the branch-point (BP), is important for SRSF2-mediated inhibition of cassette exon inclusion through directly interacting with SRSF2. We conclude that SRSF2 inhibits intron splicing to promote exon exclusion.

• Animal cells and systems
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.87-91
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• 1997

Effects of divalent cations such as $Mg^{2+}$, $Mn^{2+}$, $Ca^{2+}$, and $Zn^2$ on splicing activity of phage T4 thymidylate synthase intron RNA have been investigated. At the concentration of 0.5 mM, $Mn^{2+}$ in the absence of $Mg^{2+}$, a very small amount of pre-RNA was cleaved into ligation products (El-E2) but no circular or linear intron was produced. As the concentration of $Mn^{2+}$ was increased from 1 to 5 mM the pre-RNA was completely hydrolyzed. In the presence of 5 mM $Mg^{2+}$, both the linear intron and circular intron were produced but no El-E2 ligation product was produced. At both 3 and 5 mM $Mn^{2+}$ the RNA was hydrolyzed completely as observed with no $Mg^2+$ being present. In the case of $Zn^{2+}$, even at 0.5 mM concentration, the pre-RNA was completely hydrolyzed. This observation suggested that $Zn^{2+}$ facilitates RNA hydrolysis more rapidly than $Mn^{2+}$ does. at 5mM $Ca^{2+}$, the RNA was not hydrolyzed and remained intact as a primary transcript.

• Molecules and Cells
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• v.40 no.10
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• pp.714-730
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• 2017

Pre-mRNA splicing further increases protein diversity acquired through evolution. The underlying driving forces for this phenomenon are unknown, especially in terms of gene expression. A rice alternatively spliced transcript detection microarray (ASDM) and RNA sequencing (RNA-Seq) were applied to differentiate the transcriptome of 4 representative organs of Oryza sativa L. cv. Ilmi: leaves, roots, 1-cm-stage panicles and young seeds at 21 days after pollination. Comparison of data obtained by microarray and RNA-Seq showed a bell-shaped distribution and a co-lineation for highly expressed genes. Transcripts were classified according to the degree of organ enrichment using a coefficient value (CV, the ratio of the standard deviation to the mean values): highly variable (CVI), variable (CVII), and constitutive (CVIII) groups. A higher index of the portion of loci with alternatively spliced transcripts in a group (IAST) value was observed for the constitutive group. Genes of the highly variable group showed the characteristics of the examined organs, and alternatively spliced transcripts tended to exhibit the same organ specificity or less organ preferences, with avoidance of 'organ distinctness'. In addition, within a locus, a tendency of higher expression was found for transcripts with a longer coding sequence (CDS), and a spliced intron was the most commonly found type of alternative splicing for an extended CDS. Thus, pre-mRNA splicing might have evolved to retain maximum functionality in terms of organ preference and multiplicity.

• Genomics & Informatics
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.33-39
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• 2006

Alternative splicing (AS) is an important mechanism of producing transcriptome diversity and microarray techniques are being used increasingly to monitor the splice variants. There exist three types of microarrays interrogating AS events-junction, exon, and tiling arrays. Junction probes have the advantage of monitoring the splice site directly. Johnson et al., performed a genome-wide survey of human alternative pre-mRNA splicing with exon junction microarrays (Science 302:2141-2144, 2003), which monitored splicing at every known exon-exon junctions for more than 10,000 multi-exon human genes in 52 tissues and cell lines. Here, we describe an algorithm to deduce the relative concentration of isoforms from the junction array data. Non-negative Matrix Factorization (NMF) is applied to obtain the transcript structure inferred from the expression data. Then we choose the transcript models consistent with the ECgene model of alternative splicing which is based on mRNA and EST alignment. The probe-transcript matrix is constructed using the NMF-consistent ECgene transcripts, and the isoform abundance is deduced from the non-negative least squares (NNLS) fitting of experimental data. Our method can be easily extended to other types of microarrays with exon or junction probes.

• Journal of Applied Biological Chemistry
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• v.58 no.3
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• pp.201-208
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• 2015

The role of RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) to regulate expression of genes seems to be very important. RBPs play important roles in RNA related bioprocess such as transcription, pre-mRNA splicing, polyadenylation, transport, localization, translation, turn over and maintenance of structure. Despite of many researches on RNA binding proteins, detailed mechanisms of these proteins have not been fully understood. It seems that many parts of RBPs remains unknown and should be characterized for the better understanding of gene expression. Recently, genetic, biochemical, and bioinformatic analysis of genomes revealed a vast array of RBPs and many parts are interesting to understand bioprocessing including gene expression.

• Journal of Life Science
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• v.23 no.11
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• pp.1311-1316
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• 2013

Heterogeneous nuclear ribonucleoprotein L (hnRNP L) is a major pre-mRNA binding protein and it is an abundant nuclear protein that shuttles between the nucleus and the cytoplasm. hnRNP L is known to be related to many cellular processes, including chromatin modification, pre-mRNA splicing, mRNA export of intronless genes, internal ribosomal entry site (IRES)-mediated translation, mRNA stability, and spermatogenesis. In order to identify the cellular proteins interacting with hnRNP L, this study performed a yeast two-hybrid screening, using a human liver cDNA library. The study identified insulin-like growth factor binding protein-4 (IGFBP-4) as a novel interaction partner of hnRNP L in the human liver. It then discovered, for the first time, that hnRNP L interacts specifically with IGFBP-4 in a yeast two-hybrid system. The authenticity of this two-hybrid interaction of hnRNP L and IGFBP-4 was confirmed by an in vitro pull-down assay.