Comprehensive splicing graph analysis of alternative splicing patterns in chicken compared to human and mouse

摘要

BackgroundAlternative transcript diversity manifests itself as a prime cause of complexity in higher eukaryotes. Recently, transcript diversity studies have suggested that 60–80% of human genes are alternatively spliced. We have used a splicing pattern approach for the bioinformatics analysis of Alternative Splicing (AS) in chicken, human and mouse. Exons involved in splicing are subdivided into distinct and variant exons, based on the prevalence of the exons across the transcripts. Four possible permutations of these two different groups of exons were categorised as class I (distinct-variant), class II (distinct-variant), class III (variant-distinct) and class IV (variant-variant). This classification quantifies the variation in transcript diversity in the three species.