Protein Cell 2011, 2(5): 395–409 Protein & Cell DOI 10.1007/s13238-011-1052-z RESEARCH ARTICLE Spliceosomal genes in the D. discoideum genome: a comparison with those in H. sapiens, D. melanogaster, A. thaliana and S. cerevisiae 1 2 2 4 4 2 Bing Yu , Petra✉ Fey , Karen E. Kestin-Pilcher , Alexei Fedorov , Ashwin Prakash , Rex L. Chisholm , Jane Y. Wu3 1 Department of Molecular and Clinical Genetics, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital and Sydney Medical School (Central), the University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia 2 dictyBase, Center for Genetic Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL 60611, USA 3 Department of Neurology and Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center, Center for Genetic Medicine, Northwestern University Feinberg Medical School, Chicago, IL 60611, USA 4 Department of Medicine and Program in Bioinformatics and Proteomics/Genomics, The University of Toledo, Toledo, OH 43614, USA ✉ Correspondence:
[email protected] Received May 11, 2011 Accepted May 20, 2011 ABSTRACT KEYWORDS pre-mRNA splicing, spliceosomal genes, Dictyostelium discoideum, comparative genomics, splicing Little is known about pre-mRNA splicing in Dictyostelium regulators discoideum although its genome has been completely sequenced. Our analysis suggests that pre-mRNA spli- INTRODUCTION cing plays an important role in D. discoideum gene expression as two thirds of its genes contain at least one The amoeboid protozoan Dictyostelium discoideum is a intron. Ongoing curation of the genome to date has eukaryotic model organism that has been extensively used revealed 40 genes in D. discoideum with clear evidence in studying signal transduction, cell motility and cell differ- of alternative splicing, supporting the existence of entiation.