Thousands of exon skipping events differentiate among splicing patterns in sixteen human tissues

Alternative splicing is widely recognized for its roles in regulating genes and creating gene diversity. However, despite many efforts, the repertoire of gene splicing variation is still incompletely characterized, even in humans. Here we describe a new computational system, ASprofile, and its application to RNA-seq data from Illumina’s Human Body Map project (>2.5 billion reads). Using the system, we identified putative alternative splicing events in 16 different human tissues, which provide a dynamic picture of splicing variation across the tissues. We detected 26,989 potential exon skipping events representing differences in splicing patterns among the tissues. A large proportion of the events (>60%)…

• NS
  National Science Foundation

  Awards: R01-HG006677, 1159078
• NI
  National Institutes of Health

  Awards: R01-HG006677, HG006677