Bioinformatics analysis of Exonic Splicing Enhancers (ESEs) for predicting potential regulatory elements of hTERT mRNA Splicing

F. Wang, G.-M. Chang, X. Geng

Department of Neurology, General Hospital, Tianjin Medical University, China. gengx@tmu.edu.cn

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• Genetics

OBJECTIVES: Alternative splicing of human telomerase reverse transcriptase (hTERT) has an important effect on regulating telomerase activity. Exonic splicing enhancers (ESEs) are a family of conserved splicing factors that participate in multiple steps of the splicing pathway. Our aim is to analyze the ESEs for predicting the potential regulatory elements of hTERT mRNA splicing.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: Enter the FASTA format of hTERT total sequences or individual exon as the input data in the main interface of ESEfinder3.0 and ESEfinder2.0 program. Analyze the data of output results and compare the differences between ESEfinder3.0 and ESEfinder2.0 program.

RESULTS: Five ESEs were predicted in exon 5 to exon 9 of hTERT. They were at position 108 located in hTERT exon 5, at position 92 located in exon 6, at position 22 located in exon 7, at position 73 located in exon 8 and at position 5 located in exon 9. There were no differences between ESEfinder 3.0 and ESEfinder 2.0 in our case.

CONCLUSIONS: The identification of these potential ESEs of hTERT might be helpful for the design of antisense oligonucleotides, which could modulate hTERT alternative splicing and inhibit telomerase activity.

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