A Unique Consistent Identifier for Alternatively Spliced Transcript Variants

摘要

BackgroundAs research into alternative splicing reveals the fundamental importance of this phenomenon in the genome expression of higher organisms, there is an increasing need for a standardized, consistent and unique identifier for alternatively spliced isoforms. Such an identifier would be useful to eliminate ambiguities in references to gene isoforms, and would allow for the reliable comparison of isoforms from different sources (e.g., known genes vs. computational predictions). Commonly used identifiers for gene transcripts prove to be unsuitable for this purpose.