Question

Alternative splicing is a common mechanism for eukaryotes to expand their repertoire of gene functions. At least one estimate indicates that approximately 50 percent of human genes use alternative splicing, and approximately 15 percent of disease causing mutations involve aberrant alternative splicing. Different tissues show remarkably different frequencies of alternative splicing, with the brain accounting for approximately 18 percent of such events. (a) Define alternative splicing and speculate on the evolutionary strategy alternative splicing offers to organisms. (b) Why might some tissues engage in more alternative splicing than others?

Answer 1

Alternative splicing is one of the most important splicing mechanism that helps in the formation polycistronic mRNA an mRNA that codes for multiple proteins.

Step-by-step explanation:

Role of alternative splicing in evolution

Alternative splicing helps in the generation of protein diversity through gene duplication .Alternative splicing helps in protein protein interaction,result in the generation different isoforms of a protein .This interaction results in the formation of intrinsic disordered domains of the protein molecule.

Some tissue such as brain ,liver ,pancreas has more alternative splicing than that of other because specific tissue such as liver has adequate amount of serine threonine protein expression and genes encoding for heterogenous ribonucleoprotein in comparison to other human tissue.There are also high frequency of alternative splice site in the liver.