NASty effects on fibrillin pre-mRNA splicing: another case of ESE does it, but proposals for translation-dependent splice site choice live on

It is clear that steps in the pathway from gene transcription to protein synthesis are connected mechanistically even when they occur in distinct cellular compartments (Maniatis and Reed 2002). Mechanistic connections were initially evident when factors governing pre-mRNA capping, splicing and 3-end formation were found to associate with the carboxyl-terminal domain of transcriptionally active RNA polymerase II. More recently, splicing factors have been shown to associate with the transcription elongation factor TAT-SF1, forming a complex that can stimulate both transcription and splicing (Fong and Zhou 2001). Furthermore, a conserved transcription/export (TREX) complex has been shown to couple transcription and mRNA export (Strasser et al. 2002), and pre-mRNA splicing is now known to influence both mRNA export and nonsense-mediated mRNA decay (Reed and Hurt 2002).