New Method Reveals How Protein-Mediated RNA Loops Orchestrate Gene Splicing

A research team led by Prof.XUE Yuanchao from the Institute of Biophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has developed a new method for global profiling of in-situ RNA–RNA contacts associated with a specific RNA-binding protein(RBP)and revealed positional mechanisms by which PTBP1-associated RNA loops regulate cassette exon splicing.This study was published online in Molecular Cell on March 22.In eukaryotes,the same pre-mRNA can produce multiple protein isoforms to execute similar or different biological functions through alternative splicing.Several longstanding models proposed that RBPs may regulate alternative splicing by modulating long-range RNA–RNA interactions(RRI).However,direct experimental evidence was lacking.