Effect of myotonic dystrophy on pre-mRNA alternative splicing in skeletal muscle

Misregulated alternative splicing appears to be a major factor in the pathogenesis of myotonic dystrophy. The present study was done to further explore alternative splicing in this condition by doing exon-level analysis of mRNA from skeletal muscle of 8 subjects with type 1 myotonic dystrophy, 7 subjects with type 2 myotonic dystrophy, 8 disease controls (subjects with facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy), and 8 healthy controls . The ratios of signals from the various exons of a gene provided an index of altered exon inclusion/exclusion that was independent of the overall expression of that gene. There were numerous transcripts for which there was evidence of abnormal alternative splicing in subjects with myotonic dystrophy. For many of these transcripts, the abnormal splicing was confirmed by an independent RT-PCR approach.

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Nakamori M, Sobczak K, Puwanant A, Welle S, Eichinger K, Pandya S, Dekdebrun J, Heatwole CR, McDermott MP, Chen T, Cline M, Tawil R, Osborne RJ, Wheeler TM, Swanson MS, Moxley RT 3rd, Thornton CA